


Metallurgy

by eyres, TheFriendlyPigeon



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Beauty and the Beast Elements, Captain America Reverse Big Bang 2019, Fairy Tale Elements, Giant Robots, Hydra (Marvel), Identity Reveal, M/M, Slow Romance, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-11 14:46:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19111846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyres/pseuds/eyres, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFriendlyPigeon/pseuds/TheFriendlyPigeon
Summary: The battle quieted for the moment, the great metal giant turns, at last, and sees Steve. Dark, almost human hair frames a sharp, steel face - but, Steve is caught by its eyes. They’re bright silver, sparking in the sunlight, shot through with gray and blue, visible even at this distance. Something about them nags at Steve, calls to him, reminds him of…Instead of making the Winter Soldier, Hydra transfers Bucky's consciousness to a metal body, locking his mind within a prison of steel and programming. However, Bucky is stronger than they could've ever imagined.Written for the 2019 Cap RBB.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First I'd like to thank TheFriendlyPigeon for providing such an inspiring piece of art! It caught my eye from the first with all of its delicate details and I only hope this story does it justice. 
> 
> Also, thank you to my beta-reader, Kuja, who talked through a lot of the characters and the motivations with me and made sure this story made sense!
> 
> This is a departure from my usual writing so I very much hope you all enjoy! And please go tell TheFriendlyPigeon how lovely her art is!
> 
> The final chapter will be posted on Saturday (6/8).

 

 

Nick Fury meets the monster for the first time when he’s 45 years old. Peggy, of course, is the one who takes him out to the mansion in the mountains, drives them up the long windy drive to a towering stone manor.

“He’s on our side, Nick,” Peggy tells him. “So don’t be afraid.”

Nick nods and straightens the suit coat he’d put on for the occasion. He’s not afraid. Well, not that afraid. He’s seen the monster in action many times, after all: he’s seen him rip stone walls apart with its big claws, crush cars under one powerful foot. Hydra agents are terrified of him, fleeing at just the sound of his powerful strides toward their base. Something that strong and powerful _should_ inspire some amount of healthy fear. It’s normal for him to be nervous.

He’s seen a lot in the last few years, more than he ever imagined when he first joined SHIELD. Aliens are real. Hydra is always lurking. The monster in the shadows is a friend.

“When I retire,” Peggy says, as she does now and then to throw a grenade into conversations, “you’ll have to be the one coordinating with him. He’s not SHIELD, but he’s too valuable to not have in a fight - especially against Hydra.

Peggy slows the car at a huge wrought iron gate. “Margaret Carter and Nicholas Fury,” she tells the dark speaker, hidden in some thick vines in the brick pillars that frame the driveway.

There’s no response but the large gate begins to swing open, noiselessly.

“Howard designed the security system,” Peggy tells him as she drives forward, eyes ahead on the well manicured road. “Stark Industries owns a hundred acres of property all the way around here. This is probably one of the safest places in the world.”

The house itself is more like a castle: large circular parapets frame the four corners with thin windows cut in the sides. There is a wide porch out the front with steep steps that lead up to a large heavy door with brass locks. The door is tall enough for at least three men.

Peggy parks at the bottom of the steps and gets out, tugging at her own suit jacket. “He’ll be in the garden right now,” she tells Nick and starts off down a smooth path that winds between several hedges near the drive way.

Flowers are blooming in the late spring heat, bursts of colors against dark green bushes. Dense trees sway in a light breeze and it almost sounds like the lowing of baby lambs. Somewhere, Nick can hear the sound of water flowing.

They circle one last group of hedges and there, in the middle of the garden, is the monster.

It’s sitting in the grass, dark metal legs folded almost gracefully underneath the powerful a dark gray metal body, at least twice as big as Nick at his full height. There’s a reddish golden glow seeping from the tiny gaps in the metal where the joints and panels don’t fully come together. The face is hidden behind a mess of what almost seems to be dark hair, staring down at the tiny lamb its holding in one of its silver, tree-like arms. The other hand holds a bottle, made minuscule by the size of its palms, and the lamb is nursing noisily at the nipple.

A dozen or so little lambs surround the monster, nosing at its legs and the grass. None of them seem afraid or worried that they could be easily crushed underfoot by one of the huge limbs. The monster has a body made for war and destruction and, yet, it also seems at home here among the tiny animals and flowers.

“Hello, darling,” Peggy says and the monster lifts its head.

Large silver eyes glimmer in dark metal hollows, above a mechanical looking jaw.“Peggy,” the monster says. His voice is raspy but gentle in ways that Fury had not imagined when he’d heard the same voice roaring in the face of Hydra agents. Then, he turns to Fury, focusing those big eyes on him, like he can see all of his insides. “You must be Nick - Peggy speaks highly of you.”

Fury steps forward. Should he offer a hand to shake? Should he salute?

The monster makes a facial expression like a smile. His jaw creaks and its mouth is a dark cavern. “You can call me Soldier,” he says. “Only Peggy can call me darling.”

Peggy laughs a little and cups one metal cheek. “That’s right,” she says merrily, like they’re old friends.

Nick tilts his head and studies them. Curious.


	2. Chapter 2

The first time Bucky looks at himself in a mirror after Peggy and Howard rescue him from a dark lab, he doesn’t move for a very long time. 

It’s not like he hadn’t known what Hydra had done to him. He’d been awake, after all, when they initiated the consciousness transfer. He had screamed and begged and fought, clinging to his body with every ounce of his strength. They had dragged his very soul from between his ribs and installed it inside the metal brackets that now make up his chest. 

Bucky had known all this. 

He is no longer human. 

There is no part of this body that is flesh and bone. His metal legs are the size of small trees, ending in awkwardly forked feet that look more suited on a bird than a man. His shoulders are massive across the chest, gleaming metal arms that ends in five bulky fingers, larger than a man’s head. His eyes are an unnatural gleaming crystals in a face that only bears the faintest resemblance to something that had been human. 

“We can make some modifications,” Howard is saying now. They’re standing in his lab, deep beneath the earth in New Jersey. He’s standing a few feet back, glasses falling down his nose. He looks small - or maybe it’s just that Bucky is so large. “Your core is housed here, inside the chest cavity.”

A golden red glow emanates between the black metal struts and bolts that makes up his torso. It pulses and flickers, writhing like something alive. Bucky puts one hand where his heart should be, feels the heat pooling within him. There is no rhythm, just the rumble of machinery. 

“I’m afraid to get to close to it. I’m not sure how it’s powered or how it’s able to contain your entire functional brain. It shouldn’t be possible. The readings show small levels of radiation - but too slight to be dangerous. It’s nothing like anything else we have on Earth.” Howard pauses, shakes his head. “I can improve your sensors: better eyesight, better touch, better hearing, better movement. Get you a voice box. We can improve the joints and refinish some of the rough areas - but with the way the artificial neural pathways are woven through the machinery - there’s not much I can do.”

Bucky nods to show that he understands. He thinks, deep down beneath layers of steel, there might be an emotion like gratitude. 

Hydra hadn’t bothered with any of that. Bucky was no longer human, after all. What did he need with a voice or aesthetically pleasing limbs? The first body he had been transferred to had been been nothing but a bolted together pile of scraps: cobbled together from whatever the scientists had around them in the lab that made him big and scary and a weapon. His fingers had been knives and feet had spikes. His body had improved since then - but he was built for war. He was built for roaring and rattling and pounding enemies into submission. He was Hydra’s great soldier. He was built for terror. He hadn’t even really been able to speak in that state: a monster didn’t need to communicate beyond roars and grunts after all. 

The ultimate goal had been a sentient weapon. An immortal, unstoppable soldier that combined the flexibility of human strategy with the rigid structure of Hydra programming. He was supposed to be the perfect warrior. 

Except, Bucky Barnes is still somewhere underneath all of this metal - and Bucky Barnes had never wanted to be a soldier. He presses harder on his metal chest. There’s a faint rumble there, not like a heart beating or lungs expanding, but a deep humming that vibrates like the strings of a piano. There. That’s him. 

Hydra had tried to burn that away, strip him of all the things that made him _Bucky_ and reduce him to instincts and core programming. They had tried to rip his very self out by the roots. Instead, he is still here. When they had rescued him, he’d been in a cell deep within the earth because he kept turning on his handlers. He’d fought back no matter what they had done. 

They may have taken his body - but they hadn’t taken him. 

“Barnes?” Stark is asking. He leans closer like he’s going to touch, but pulls his hand back at the last second. He hasn’t touched Bucky since they found him, unless it was needed for some test. Stark had been the one piloting the jet, twisting around to see Bucky where he was curled into the cargo bay. Peggy had bent over him and stroked his head and wrapped her hand around one of his fingers. Her touch had been the one thing that kept him sane.

Stark has kept his distance, a careful barrier of space between himself and the monster that Bucky has found himself inside. Bucky can’t blame him.

Bucky nods again in answer and closes his eyes so he doesn't have to see himself in the mirror. 

Whenever Howard deigns to make an unplanned house call, Bucky knows something is wrong. In the twelve years since Bucky had been saved from Hydra, Howard has only driven all the way up here to the manor unexpectedly twice. 

The mansion is about 90 miles outside Manhattan, up a long, slow winding road in the hillsides. Stark’s grandfather had lived there, once upon a time. When it became clear Bucky’s condition wasn't going to be easily fixed, Stark had the whole place retrofitted to accommodate someone of Bucky’s size and weight. After all, Bucky couldn't stay in the New Jersey, not permanently. Someone would've spotted the monster on the military base soon enough. Here, at least, he can be outside. He can feel the sun on his head and smell the grass. He can pretend to be a person.

The floors of the manor are reinforced oak, the ceilings are high, and the halls are wide. A hundred acres of gardens surround the house, bordered by a wall twice Bucky’s new hight and over five feet thick. The nearest town is miles away and the road that leads here is rarely used. It is the perfect place to hide a monster. 

“Maria and the kid are getting lunch,” Howard explains as he goes with Bucky into the study. He paces the thick carpeted floors that muffle Bucky’s giant footsteps, peering upwards at the huge shelves lined with books that Bucky reads, careful he doesn’t rip the pages with his massive fingers. “You’ve been doing some reading.”

Bucky sits down in the huge armchair that’s wedged next to a floor to ceiling window that looks over the gardens. “Have to find some way to occupy my time. My boss doesn’t use me much.” Almost a decade later, his voice is still strangely flat, mechanical and unnaturally deep, even to his own ears, like two mismatch gears rubbing together. He tries to speak as little as possible. 

Howard spreads his hands. “You’re complaining that I pay you to sit around and do nothing?”

“You told me I’d be helping with security, doing something besides sitting here.”

Howard sits down in the chair opposite Bucky, hopping a little to get into the chair made for Bucky’s much larger size. “We’ve been analyzing the readings from the cryo chamber.”

The heat in the center of Bucky’s chest washes cold for a brief moment. Almost instinctively, Bucky reaches deep inside of himself for the tenuous link that still holds him to his flesh and his bones. 

They’d been able to locate his body just months after Peggy had rescued him. It had been surreal to peer through a small, frosted window and see his own face sleeping inside. When Bucky had moved out to the manor, the cryo chamber and his sleeping body had been installed in the lower basement level of the house. It's like a tomb: the inert body of Bucky Barnes lying in a metal coffin deep below the ground, far from sunlight. Howard and his team had been studying it for years, trying to figure out a way to return Bucky’s consciousness to it. So far, they had failed.

“It’s not good news, Barnes,” Howard tells him. “Your consciousness wants to naturally revert to your own body. They had to put some serious programming in place to keep that from happening every couple hours. There’s some of them that I can unravel but…” he lifts his hands. “It’s more magic than science, honestly.”

Bucky curls his fingers against the chair. His touch sensors aren’t good enough to feel the threads but he can feel the thick padding wrapped around the arms. 

“I’ve made some progress,” Howard continues. “We’ve figured out a way to break down the programming that keeps you from fighting Hydra or talking about them. We can fix that in the next six months or so. Peggy will be glad to hear that. But… the programming that keeps you from talking about who you are or your past… it’s really wedged deep. I’m not sure we can pull that out without seriously damaging your mind.”

Of course. Bucky closes his eyes and thinks of Steve. They’d discovered he couldn’t speak Steve’s name when he tried to ask Peggy where he was, as soon as they had given his voice back. Bucky had assumed he was off on a mission or at home with the six kids that he and Peggy would've already popped out. He’d spent hours in the dank cell, imagining Steve being happy and hale, elaborate fantasies of coming home to a small house on a tree line street, Steve smiling with sun on his hair. 

When his voice had come back, the first name he’d tried to say had been Steve’s and he had stuttered and his mouth had locked up, closing tightly around the beloved name. When he’d finally been able to communicate his question, through trial and error, Peggy had told him Steve was dead. They had thought he had known and she was so so sorry she hadn’t said something sooner. He’d died in the war, in a plane, saving lives. “He’s a hero,” she said. It had felt like his consciousness had been cleaved yet again and he had wailed. 

There had been no small house, no sunshine in Steve’s hair. There as no happy homecoming or one more glimpse of that beloved face. Steve was gone. Somehow, implausibly, Bucky had survived while Steve had fallen to his grave. 

It was shortly after that they discovered he also hadn’t been able to say his own name or speak of Brooklyn or the war, even his own family - anything before he’d become a monster. Hydra had wanted him completely separated from his own life. 

“But I can fight them now?” he asks Howard now, eyes still closed. This is the moment, he knows. This is the moment where he chooses how to spend the rest of his life. It would be so easy, he thinks, to let the despair overcome him. He could sit in this mansion and let the dust cover him, wait out the decades in vain for Howard to find a a way to free him. He could let himself grow rusty and broken. Or…

Howard clears his throat. “You can.”

He can adapt. He can fight. He can carry on that mantle that Steve had picked up and root out Hydra from the earth. He can do something good with this horrible body and he can make Steve, make himself proud. He can take back what Hydra has stolen from him, in blood and fury. Bucky Barnes may not have wanted to be a soldier - but Bucky Barnes will make do with what he’s got.

Bucky opens his eyes. Howard looks grim. “What is it?” he asks.

“We’ve been tracking your physical body’s bio signs. The strain that the consciousness sharing is inflicting is not insignificant. It’s killing your body. Not quickly - but it… you are dying.”

Perhaps Bucky should have felt more grief. Perhaps this should make him angry. Or, maybe, he’s been dead since they first ripped his mind from his body in the first place. Instead, he feels his resolve strengthen. There is an end in sight and he can do this. Suffering that is only for a time can always be borne. “How long?” he asks. 

Howard’s eyes dart to the left. “We’re still working on it. It’s slow. Maybe 40 or 50 years? If it continues at the current rate. We’ll have to keep monitoring but…”

“So I won’t be like this forever.” Bucky lifts a hand to his chest, presses it there to feel the warmth of his mind - the only warmth left in this whole metal prison of a body. He thinks of Steve, gone already beyond the reach of pain and hurt. “I will die.” 

_I will see Steve again._

If Howard hears the relief in his voice, he doesn’t mention it.

Peggy takes his call the next day.

“I’m ready,” Bucky tells her. “I know you’re in charge of SHIELD now. I know you can use me. Let me go after Hydra.”

Peggy sighs over the phone. “Howard told me, Barnes. It's going to be at least six months before they're sure the programming is gone. And then…

Bucky taps his fingers on the wide desk he’s sitting at. “I'm going to spend that time getting ready. If I'm on the clock here, I need to make it count. We’re all gonna die, Peg.”

She agrees.

In 2011, Peggy comes to see him on a Saturday, which is unusual for her. Normally, her driver brings her every other Tuesday, a clockwork schedule they've kept since they were both young and quick and busy. 

He waits for her in the garden, as he always does. Her drivers rotate to keep up secrecy but, still, precautions must be taken. Over the years, her footsteps have gotten slower and Bucky tries to wait as close to the entrance as he can, trusting the tree shadows to obscure him from the drive.

Bucky (because whatever he looks like on the outside, no matter how many times he’s been made and unmade and torn apart and put back together, he is still Bucky in his own head) comes out to the garden whenever he can. He has to walk lightly: his heavy, metal clawed feet will leave ugly tracks in the pristine grass if he’s not careful. The birds and small animals are familiar with him by now - each new generation passing down to the next about the strange metal monster that brings birdseed and carrots and dishes of milk and sits very still until they creep up and over his large arms and legs. 

Sitting with the animals in the garden is as close to peace that he’s been able to find on this earth. His body was made for war - and, yet, here, small cats will creep close to bat at his feet, tiny rabbits will sniff at his hands. A few goats will graze in the grass beside him. Some brave birds will perch upon his head, chirping wildly while he makes low humming noises in his chest. He is not a monster here. He is just another part of the garden, nestled in the rich blooms and fragrances, faraway from the cold labs that he was reborn into. He can find himself here, the part of him that is still undeniably human even though he has not had human hands or a mouth or eyes or heart in decades. 

Here, he is Bucky Barnes. Maybe, in another world, he would’ve come home from war to be a farmer. Maybe he and Steve would’ve moved from the city and raised lambs and goats and crops. He would’ve planted and harvested and birthed. He would have touched the world with flesh hands and felt it touch him back in return. 

Today, it’s unusually warm: he can feel the heat warming the dark metal of his shoulders and the back of his head. Summer is approaching; it’ll be sixty-ninth summer that Bucky has spent trapped in this body. He leans back, lets his large head rest against the trunk of a tree. Deep inside his chest, the electric pulse that pushes this body through one day after another throbs onward.

Peggy comes down the path, her white hair puffing around her shoulders in the warm afternoon breeze. She is still beautiful, will always be beautiful to him. Her age is written all over her face and her back, tangible proof of the life she has lived. Bucky is almost envious of it. He has watched her get old, the frailty of humanity betraying her while he stayed limber and strong in his own metal body. 

His physical body has mostly stayed the same, even decades after he’d gotten loose from Hydra. Howard kept his promise and upgraded what he could before he died in the early 90s. Since then, Bucky does most of his own maintenance on his metal joints and hinges. Who could he really trust, after all? His body still feels like an odd assortment of parts most days, but they are his, for better or worse.

He is has been mostly machine much longer than he was human.

"Darling," Peggy says, when she reaches him. Her hand touches his face, skims down his cheek and he can just feel the papery softness of her skin. "Sorry to barge in on you like this."

He nods, tucking his limbs close to himself. Even decades later, he has never been able to shake the feeling of over-large clumsiness when he's around other people. In his own head, he can feel like himself, feel like this body is his own. When he's around other people, that sense of wrongness comes right back. "Is everything okay?" he asks, feels the deep rumble of his chest. 

Peggy sits down next to him. She still never seems afraid of him. She has been the one person over decades to touch this new body kindly and he will love her forever for that. She touches his head now, rubs her hand down the back of his neck where the touch sensors are the most sensitive. 

“I’ve missed you dreadfully,” she tells him, brushing aside white curls as they fly across her face. She hasn’t been well. He can see it in the way her hands tremble and her voice is thinner than it should be. Things are getting worse for her and soon she will be gone and no one left alive will know the story of Bucky Barnes. 

“I’ve kept myself busy,” he tells her. There had been a Hydra base in Ankara and a drug smuggling ring in Idaho. 

She hums. “Fury showed me the reports. He was impressed.”

Bucky makes the air whistle through his olfactory cavity in semblance of a huff. “That kid’s really coming up in the world. He might even be able to fill your shoes someday, Pegs.”

Peggy doesn’t laugh and so he turns to look at her, feeling the springs and cogs in his neck twist and bend with the movement. 

“What is it?” he asks. Howard’s death was the last event that had made her hesitant with him. “Peggy?”

“It’s Steve,” she says, gently but quickly, as if she needs to get it out as fast as possible. Her fingers wrap around the curve of his wrist like she can anchor him. “They found him, in the plane. He’d been preserved by the ice. He’s alive.”

Deep in the basement, Bucky knows that his flesh and blood heart goes still for a moment before pounding hard. Here in the garden, one of the gears in his shoulders clicks hard as he flinches. His jaw creaks with the force of how he presses his mouth together.

Steve is alive. 

Peggy’s fingers press hard into his arm. “James?” Her voice is soft. “He woke up in New York a week ago. He’s okay. SHIELD has him somewhere safe. I can take you now...”

“No,” he snaps, so fast that there’s an unpleasant screeching noise from his throat, startling the bunnies nibbling in the grass nearby. “Don’t tell him.”

There won’t be a happy reunion. Hydra stole that from him just like they stole everyone else. He couldn’t bear to see Steve look at him with fear or disgust or pity. Bucky wouldn’t survive that. Bucky can’t even say his name.

Peggy’s hand trembles against his. “Why not?” she asks, that familiar edge of steel in her voice. 

He turns face her fully: his large metal face with the glowing silver eyes. “I can’t even tell him myself, Peggy. You know I can’t.”

Her gaze softens. “I’d tell him for you and he wouldn’t care about the rest. He’d be happy to have you back in any form.”

“Except,” Bucky says, “he wouldn’t have me back. Not really. I’m dying and we all know it won’t be much longer. Do you want him to get me back only to lose me again? It’s better this way. Let him move on.” _And, let me escape this earth knowing that Steve still thinks of me as I was._

Peggy takes in a deep breath. “I won’t force you into anything. I swore that to you long ago and I will uphold that to my dying day.”

Bucky nods and shifts a little so she can lean against his shoulder. 

She sighs. “Your love for him has not changed after all these years - he should know that. The depth of your love for him, Barnes. It is the stuff of legends. I doubt he will be any different.”

Bucky closes his eyes, thinks of two young men in the dark forest, desperate and so in love. They had no idea what would come. Steve had wanted them to go home, after the war. They had talked of two houses on the same street, of Sunday dinners and baseball games. They’d dreamed of growing old together, far from the battlefield. Then, Bucky had fallen.

Peggy strokes her hand down his wrist. “How have you been doing? Have you had anymore of your… episodes?”

He cringes a little, but he answers honestly. “It’s been happening more. It’s like I go to sleep for awhile or my limbs go weak and I can’t move them at all.” He lifts her eyes to hers and sees that they’re full of tears. “Peggy, don’t cry. It doesn’t hurt. We’ve known this was coming for a long time. I’m ready. I just wish…” He stops there, unable to say it.

Her fingers squeeze on the metal of his wrist. “I know, darling. I know.”

They sit together as the garden goes dark around them. 

After Peggy leaves, Bucky calls Fury. 

“I hear you pulled Captain America out of the ice,” he says, hoping that his monotone rumble comes across as disinterested and not desperate. 

“Carter tell you that?”

Bucky sits back in his large chair. This is is his favorite room in the whole house: it takes up most of the top floor with a large glass ceiling. When he tilts back his head, he can see all the stars spread out over the sky. He feels almost normal here. The stars can make anyone feel small. For years, he’s sat here and stared up, wondering if Steve was out there among them. He wasn’t sure what he believed in anymore, but, in this space, he’d always found himself hoping that Steve had found peace and comfort in death. “She came up to see me.”

Fury is quiet for a moment. “I’ll never understand you two.” Then, he heaves a sigh. “Yep. We got ourselves a defrosted Captain. He’s a real pain in my ass so far.”

The little mechanical windpipe in Bucky’s throat makes the clicking noise it always does when he wants to laugh. Like Peggy, Fury has never seemed to be afraid of him and that always comforts Bucky. He’s not completely alone in the universe. Bucky blinks slowly and stares up the stars while Fury waits him out. “Could you keep me updated on how he’s doing?” Is that showing too much? Probably. Fury was always the most suspicious person he’d known. 

This is too important to not take a risk, though. Bucky’s been risking things for Steve since he was a kid. They’d kiss each other in back alleys, hoping no one would be walking by. He’d held Steve in their bed, in that tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and believed that somehow they could be together. 

“Do I look like like his babysitter?” Fury says and his sarcasm comes loud across the line. “Should I install a little nanny cam so you can make sure I’m taking care of him properly? I don’t answer to you, Soldier.”

Bucky feels the energy source in his chest throbbing. He needs this. _Don’t keep him from me._ He can feel that familiar anger, filling that hot spot in his chest where his consciousness burns in this metal shell. He closes his eyes and forces the rage away, reaches for serenity. This is Fury. Anger won’t work. His throat clicks as he fights against the programming. What can he say? What will get by the programming and also give enough to Fury? 

“I knew…” The words die and he has to start again. Stick with the factual and let Fury infer. “In 1944, Rogers broke through a German blockade and saved over 600 men from starvation.” 

Fury is silent, digesting his words. “Thought you were a Russian.”

“Nope.” Bucky presses one hand to his chest, feels the hum of his life force. One secret in trade for another. “So will you let me know how he’s doing?”

Fury sighs. “We’ve gotten him staying in New York. He’s adjusting. Any tips you can give me?”

Bucky bends forward and braces his giant elbows on his knobby knees, his mechanical systems squeaking a little. “Be honest with him,” he says. “He hates when people lie to him.”


	3. Chapter 3

Summer comes gradually, creeping through Bucky’s gardens as fruits ripen and animals gather up the fallen fruit and nuts. 

Bucky spends his time using the long reach of his massive arms to pluck the fruit from the very tallest points of trees. He does maintenance on his jet and upgrades the joints in his ankles. Then, in the long light of the evenings, he lets himself read the weekly reports that Fury sends him about Steve. 

He feels like a kid again, poring over the neatly typed words on his tablet until every word is memorized. It’s mundane for the most part: Rogers goes to the gym, Rogers goes to the coffee shop, Rogers goes for a run, Rogers attends appointment with his SHIELD appointed shrink. Now and then, there’s a photo and Bucky can’t help but linger over them, studying the curve of Steve’s face. Steve alive and well in the 21st century feels surreal. 

As the weeks go by, he finds himself passing off more and more missions back to Fury. Steve is in New York. He should be close to New York. Just in case, he tells himself.

That, however, is not the entire truth.

His episodes, despite how he blew off Peggy when she asked, are coming with more and more frequency. Sometimes, he’ll be sitting in the garden and, suddenly, the sun has set and he’s been sitting there unknowing and unmoving for hours. Sometimes, he’ll be tending to the trees and need to sit down because his limbs have gone heavy and weak and his vision is too blurry to see the sun. 

It should be scary. 

He can feel this body deteriorating around him - but he’s been alive for so long.

Fury comes up for the Fourth of July, dressed in a black leather coat despite the heat. “I hate the city on this holiday,” he mutters as he trails behind Bucky through the trees. “Too many people. Too much noise. Nice and quiet up here.”

Bucky hums and tosses an apple over his shoulder. 

Fury catches it. “You remember the Avengers Initiative?” he says after he’s taken a bite. 

“Haven’t heard you bring that in a couple years.” They’ve come to a bench sitting next to a fish pond and Bucky lowers himself to the grass, tucking his knees up. Fury sits on the bench and he’s just a little shorter than Bucky like this. “Did Stark finally agree?”

“I think Rogers should lead it.”

Bucky feels his huge chest throb. He feels like emotions are all over this face though he knows that not a single metal piece has moved. “He is a Captain,” he says. 

“Do you think he’d be good at it?” Fury is staring at him with his one eye, hands on his knees, and face grooved, like he knows the truth.

Does he know? Bucky stares back. How could he know? The official record says that Bucky Barnes died at the bottom of a gorge. That has never changed. How could anyone look at Bucky as he is now and see Bucky Barnes? 

“He has always been easy to follow,” he says at last and feels like his joints are going to get stuck like this. 

Fury watches him for a moment longer and then nods. “At ease, Soldier,” he says. “I understand.”

“I still can’t be a part of it.” He stares up at the sky, watches a bird flap across the blue space between the trees. 

Fury pats his shoulder. “Think about it.”

After Fury leaves, he makes himself go down to the basement tomb. The room is dark and quiet like always and his body looks like its dreaming. Maybe this is all a dream. Maybe he’s laying at the bottom of the cliff and this is all the fevered hallucinations before death. He watches his own face, haloed by the monitors and machines filling the room. 

Then, he turns to the readouts, checks the charts and latest blood tests. He checks the numbers once and then checks them again. They’re worse: worse than they were a year ago and worse than they were a month ago. Howard’s initial projection may have been off, but it was really only a matter of time at this point. Maybe… eight months? A year?

Steve will be Captain of the Avengers by then. He’ll have a new team, a new family. He’ll have a home and a purpose and a future and Bucky will be dead, like he should’ve been all those years ago. This is the way things should be. 

He doesn’t want to die - but he’s been dying for over 70 years: he’s gotten good at it. 

Then, a few weeks later, aliens attack New York City. 

Bucky’s in the jet before he can think about it. Fury had this one especially designed for him after the one that Howard had made for him in the eighties blew up rather spectacularly. This one is sleek and black and can get him to Manhattan in 15 minutes, which is all that matters right now. 

“I thought you could use some help,” he says when Fury picks up the secure line.

“I’ll never say no to reinforcements.” Fury pauses. “The Avengers are there,” he says. “I thought you should know. Coulson’s got Cap decked out like the Fourth of July. You can’t miss him.”

Fury’s right. Bucky puts the jet down on top of one of the buildings left standing. The aliens are swarming across rubble strewn streets and the sky is boiling like a caldron as more spill down onto the city. Bucky leaps from the cockpit and throws himself into a group of the aliens. They’re not much heftier than humans past their armor and he hurls them in all directions, using his size and strength like a battering ram.

This is what he can do. This is what he was made for. He tosses his head back and lets himself roar at the sky as the aliens swarm toward them. Let them come. 

He leaps over a crumbled bridge and uses the scythe in his left hand to slice through a group of aliens. They scatter and fall around him, shrieking as they reconvene. One leaps upon his shoulders and he roars again, plucking it off with one hand and tossing it through a storefront. He shakes himself and, when he lifts his head, he immediately sees the flash of red, white and blue at the end of the block. 

Steve. 

It’s Steve.

Steve is staring directly at him, eyes wide. 

There’s no place to run and hide. Bucky is in the wide open, surrounded by the dead aliens and Steve is standing on top of a burnt out bus, shield in his left hand. He’s as bright as a beacon among the rubble, looking like he did in Germany and France and Brooklyn. 

Bucky has spent almost seventy years carefully preserving Steve’s face in his mind. All the time vanishes the second they lock eyes. Bucky is 5 and 10 and 16 and 21 and 25 and Steve is looking back at him like he always is. The energy source in his chest emits a low whine. _Yeah_ , Bucky thinks, _me too, buddy_. 

Bucky catalogues it all, aware for the first time how much larger he is in the body than Steve is. He could lift him up with just one arm. It’s like the summer Bucky had gotten his growth spurt and Steve hadn’t. Bucky could rest his elbow on Steve’s head. All of his metal parts are humming. He’s aware of the way his metal arms are bigger than tree trunks and his legs are bolted together struts of metal. He’s aware of how inhuman he is.

They’re still staring at each other. Bucky should say something. 

He opens his mouth, feels the mechanisms in his throat click to life. “Captain,” he calls across the space, his voice rumbling like a tractor. “Fury sent me to help out.”

God, he wants to be familiar with Steve. He wants to go to his knees so Steve can look right in his face and beg Steve to recognize him. He wants the last decades have all been a nightmare and now that Steve’s here, it’ll all be okay. It’ll be like the factory all over again: Steve will touch his face and they’ll be able to leave all the darkness behind. 

But, he can’t even say Steve’s name - he can’t call to him like a friend. He can’t tell Steve who he is. Hydra still has that grip tightly on his mind. 

Bucky shifts his weight, feels the squeak of his joints and hinges and springs and the extent of all the ways he is _not_ Bucky Barnes. 

Steve lifts one hand and touches it to his forehead in a salute and then leaps from the bus, heading toward a group of aliens. 

When it’s all over and all the aliens have collapsed lifelessly to the ground and the hole in the sky has shut behind a nuke, Bucky thinks about going to Steve and his team. He can see them there, at the end of the block, laughing and patting on each other on the back. 

Even if Steve didn’t know who Bucky is, Steve wouldn’t turn him away. It’s Steve. Steve wouldn't be like the STRIKE teams with their mixture of fear and derision. He wouldn't think Bucky is a dumb robot, only useful as a battering ram. Steve would look closer. He would. 

He takes a step. 

No. They need to be a team. They need to figure out how they fit together. It’s time for a new group of people to save the world from evil, like he and Howard and Peggy had and the Howlies before that. 

He moves backward, eye fixed on the way Steve’s hair glows in the dusty sunlight. 

“I need you on this,” Fury tells him four months later. “You’re our best chance of clearing the base without setting off any booby traps. This base goes back to the 40s and you’re still our top source of knowledge from that period of Hydra.” 

Bucky drums his fingers on his desk. “In Siberia?”

“We’re in the helicarrier over the Pacific now. With your jet, you can meet us in an hour.” 

Fury rarely pushes for him to take missions like this. Theirs was more of a symbiotic relationship: Fury keeping him apprised of SHIELD’s intelligence and Bucky picking and choosing what he wanted to be involved in. 

“So I can’t say no?” he tries. He’s been feeling weak on and off the last few days, limbs going heavy and tingly in waves. This is only going to get worse. Fury doesn’t know about the expiration date on his life, though. That’s a secret Peggy and Howard have kept for him. 

“I’ll see you in an hour, Soldier.” 

The line goes dead. 

They’re steaming toward the Indian Ocean when he lands on the deck of the helicarrier, smoothly parking his sleek jet among the much smaller transport ones. They’re at a low enough altitude that people are still milling about the flat upper deck of the aircraft: he can see Maria Hill standing with a clipboard near a group of STRIKE operatives and Romanoff talking on comms near the entrance to the command deck. 

Bucky doesn’t like the helicarrier. He’s not an unfamiliar sight to seasoned SHIELD agents - but they still give him a wide berth whenever he’s around. He’s too big to fit through most of the hallways and rooms, so he’s relegated to the hangar spaces, like the rest of the heavy machinery. Most of the time, he feels more like another piece of SHIELD equipment than one of the team. 

“Fury said you be here.” Steve.

If he wasn’t made of metal, he would’ve startled. He turns, hating the way he has to move most of his body in order to see behind him. He should install better springs in his neck. 

Steve is in a navy uniform, a silver star spangled across his chest, sitting atop some strapped down storage crates. His helmet is gone and his hair is cut in a modern style, brushed short on the top. He looks healthy and strong and so, so beautiful. 

Ah. This is why Fury had wanted him here.

“Captain,” he manages. It comes out rougher than he meant but Steve doesn’t flinch. 

“You can call me Steve.” He hops down from the crates and comes close. He’s about half the size of Bucky - but he seems larger than life like he always has. He offers his hand, lifting it like he wants to touch Bucky. 

Bucky can do nothing but reach back. He opens his mouth and expects the programming to kick in, lock his jaw and stop him from uttering the beloved name like it has for all of these years. “Steve,” he repeats, instead. He blinks dumbly - feels his whole big, hot core surge and throb like a train engine chugging up a hill. The beloved name still tingles in his mouth. Was it because Steve had introduced himself? Did it breach the programming since Steve was now more than just a fond memory? What else had it unlocked? “Steve,” he says again like a dumb robot but he can’t help it. He wishes he could smile, wishes he could cry. 

Steve’s hand touches his, wraps around two of the fingers, like they’re really shaking hands. 

A name. God. He needs to say something He needs to offer a name and not stand here like the idiot monster half of SHIELD thinks he is. _I’m Bucky._ The words freeze in his circuity, spinning round and round on endless loop, unable to be said out loud. He closes his eyes. So that programming had not been broken.

“And you can call me Soldier,” he says, trying to make his voice as human as possible. He wishes so badly he could smile. 

“Soldier,” Steve repeats and nods like he’s internalized the name. “Thanks for you help in New York. I didn’t see you after to say it then.”

Bucky nods. Steve is looking him right in the eyes, square and unflinching. There are so few people who’ve done that. Peggy, Howard, Fury. It’s a very small list. 

“Hill tells me you’re considered the expert around here on Hydra.”

“I do what I can.”

Steve nods. “That’s all any of us can do. Good to have you here, Soldier.”

They see each other once more before the raid. The team is flying in on helicopters: Steve, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, and a few STRIKE operatives. Bucky is taking his jet since he won’t fit any of the copters. 

On the deck, Steve has his shield strapped to his back and his helmet on, though the straps are loose around his jaw. 

“We’ll come in from the south,” Steve says, map spread over one of the crates. 

They normally hold one of the briefings in the upstairs rooms, but Steve had moved it down here. Bucky was glad - he normally isn’t invited to these on account of his size. 

Steve taps his finger against the map. “Then come up through the canyon here, while Soldier comes in from the West. The turrets are here, here, and here. We’ll need them to be clear or we’ll be sitting ducks as we approach.” He turns to Bucky. “You can handle that? Fury said you could but I don’t want to put you out there if you’re just gonna be blasted to smithereens.”

In all of his years running ops with SHIELD, no one had bothered to ask just how indestructible Bucky was. Of course the first person to do it would be Steve. 

Bucky nods. “Don’t worry about me, Cap. A few machine guns and grenades are mosquitos. Been through a lot worse.” He doesn’t know what makes him add the last part - but the look Steve shoots him is so familiar that Bucky swears he feels his heart pound where it rests in the basement thousands of miles away: protectiveness and righteous fury and indignation. 

No one has ever viewed Bucky as something to be protected or defended before. 

They move out at dusk, the sun setting against icy plains and the only sound is the pounding of the helicopters. Bucky peels off from them fifty miles out and heads to his drop point. 

_Be safe,_ he thinks as he watches the helicopter carrying Steve bank to the left. 

Hearing Steve’s voice over his comms sends him right back to Europe and being 26 years old and halfway broken, believing the worst was behind him. It’s soothing to hear the familiar timber calling out positions and marks. God, he’d loved Steve so much. It had been the only thing that had felt warm in his entire body those days.

“Soldier, checking in,” he confirms in the roll call. _I’m here, Steve._

He climbs out of the jet and checks his weaponry. He kitted up with the repulsor cannons before he left, replacing his normal forearms with the weaponized ones. They’ll take down a wall in a couple seconds. This should be a cake walk. Fury didn’t need him. 

Bucky finds, though, that doesn’t mind. This, after all, could be the most he ever gets of Steve.

The mission goes smoothly: only two minor injuries among their team and the Hydra base is nothing but scorched earth. Once they’re all safely back on board, the helicarrier takes off for home as dawn starts to break in the eastern sky. 

Bucky picks an out of the way corner of the hangar and sits down against a wall. From here, he can see the crewmen cleaning up and refueling the helicopters and, above, the ready room where the returning team is celebrating their victory. He can see smiles, a bottle being passed around, back slaps. 

This metal body is too big for that room, so here he sits. 

“Hello.”

Bucky looks down and Steve is there, stripped down to tac pants and a white t-shirt, dog tags hanging loose around his neck. His hair is sticking up with sweat and there are a couple fast healing bruises on his bare arms. 

“You’re not up there?” Bucky asks, jerking his chin toward the celebration.

Steve comes closer, slides down the wall so they’re sitting side by side, even if he barely comes up to Bucky’s armpit. He mimics Bucky’s pose, knees up with arms folded over them. “I can’t get drunk,” he says. “Doesn’t seem to be much point. Besides, you did triple what most of those guys did and you’re down here.”

Bucky taps one metal finger on his knee. “Can’t get drunk and can’t fit.”

“You’re okay though?” Steve asks, tilting his head like he’s scanning the whole big metal body for injuries. “Nothing too injured?”

It’s the first time someone from SHIELD has asked him that. “I’m okay,” Bucky tells him. “I’m hard to injure. I’m too big for most things to hurt.”

Steve makes a huffing noise. “I used to be small,” he says. “First few days after I took the serum, I knocked into everything. Doors, walls, ceilings, cars. Even the side of a train. I felt like a giant. I went back to my old apartment and it was like everything had shrunk.” He shakes his head. “And that’s nothing compared to you.”

Bucky’s throat works. Steve had never told him that. There hadn’t been much time to have long, quiet conversations in the war. This small, new bit of information when he’d thought he’d never learn anything new about Steve again makes the power source in his chest do funny things. 

“I couldn’t even walk,” he says, making his mechanical rumble as quiet as it can be. “When they first… Couldn’t figure out how to move my legs or arms or… had to figure all of it out.” He remembers the Hydra scientists laughing as he dragged himself across the concrete floor, trying to find some escape. He’d been so afraid, delirious almost with terror at the new body he’d found himself in. He hasn’t told anyone that. Not even Peggy. But this is Steve and Bucky wants him to know everything.

Steve is quiet and then Bucky feels a hand touch his arm. He looks down and Steve has put his hand on Bucky’s elbow, right on the ridged joint. He’s squeezing a little like he can hear the pain behind the words. The touch is warm and Bucky swears he can feel it spreading through his simulated neural pathways and circuits. He wonders if his body can feel it too, even in the cryo chamber: the click of a long ago touch finally falling back in place. 

“Fury said that you were a soldier. Back in the war. That they experimented on you too. But,” Steve hesitates. “I volunteered. For what happened to me. Did you?”

Bucky thinks of the dark lab and the pain in his chest as his consciousness, his soul, was ripped from his flesh body and forced into the awkward confines of this metal monstrosity. “No,” he replies and is surprised himself at how rough his voice is. “I didn't.” He looks down st the metal joints of his knees, where the soldered seam is a little imperfect where it connects with the wide column of his thighs. All of his disparate pieces melded together like so many scraps. 

Steve nods. “I'm sorry.”


	4. Chapter 4

Steve sees Soldier for the first time at the Battle of New York. Maybe it’s the overall chaos of the day, but he doesn’t feel any fear or shock when he sees the giant metal robot tearing the heads off of aliens as they swarm across the rubble strewn around Park Avenue. 

It’s not like Tony - there’s clearly no man beneath the black and silver metals that that are bolted together to make the bulk of the body. A red, pulsing glow is emanating through the cracks, like a fire is roaring in the center of the robot’s chest. It moves gracefully, despite the awkward proportions of its limbs and the ways certain parts look clumsily fit together. 

The aliens are no match for it. They look like beetles scuttling out of a nest only to be crushed underfoot. They screech as they surge around the robot, dark limbs reaching out only to be batted away like fleas. With a roar, the robot picks up a light pole and uses it like a club, swinging it through the cluster with great sweeps until none are left standing. It’s almost elegant to watch.

The battle quieted for the moment, the great metal giant turns, at last, and spots Steve. Dark, almost human hair frames a sharp, steel face - but, Steve is caught by its eyes. They’re bright silver, sparking in the sunlight, shot through with gray and blue, visible even at this distance. Something about them nags at Steve, calls to him, reminds him of…

“Captain - Fury sent me to help out,” the robot calls across the distance. There’s something very human about the voice - Steve can’t put his finger on it but he knows right away that this is not an AI. 

_Who are you?_ He thinks and almost starts forward to get a closer look, but Natasha’s voice comes over his earpiece, calling him back to the battle. So, he salutes their ally and leaps back toward Stark Tower. 

By the time the battle is over, the robot is gone.

Steve isn’t sure why, in a world full of insane things, the robot is what captures his attention. It must be the eyes: so strange and so human, beautiful in the midst of all that fury. The voice wasn’t what he had expected either. In quiet moments, he finds himself bent over his sketchbook, drawing thick legs and a wide chest, the way bolts were turned tight. He draws the sweep of an angular jaw and the suggestion of bright eyes.

There was just something about him…

So, when the robot is nowhere to be seen in the days after the battle, Steve does what any good tactician would do: he begins his reconnaissance. 

He asks Natasha about it four days later. 

Her face doesn’t move when he describes what he saw. One eyebrow twitches just a little when he finishes. “That’s the Soldier,” she says. “He works with SHIELD occasionally. I don’t… When I was a girl, in Russia, they told us stories about him. That he was an American monster that ate little Russian girls for lunch and picked his teeth with their bones. He was a legend, even when I was a child.”

Sometimes Steve thinks she tells him things to see how he’ll react. She is pushing and testing, watching for something. He’s not sure what yet. He keeps his face calm. 

“He seemed pretty friendly to me,” he says instead. “Made quick work of those aliens.”

She nods like he’s told her something else. 

Fury is even more inscrutable. “Don’t know his real name. Some Hydra shit - keeps him from telling anyone who he really is,” he tells Steve, barely looking up from his computer screen. “He’s good to have in a fight, though.”

“How long has he worked for SHIELD?”

Fury pauses, leans back in his chair and taps the tops of his fingers together. “He does not work for me, Captain.”

It’s another test.

Steve stares back, evaluating his next question. “Why did he come to fight the aliens?”

One side of Fury’s mouth tugs the tiniest bit. “I think you two have some similar life experiences. You can ask Stark. His father knew him too,” he says. “Now get out of my office.”

Tony is only vaguely interested. “Are you sure,” he says, the entirety of his upper body beneath a large intricate panel, “that it wasn’t some sort of remote AI? Or a drone?” 

Music is blaring from overhead, something loud and metal. Steve doesn’t care for it much - but he forges ahead. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so? What are your actual qualifications, Rogers, for determining what is an AI and what is not? Do you think JARVIS is man living in the rafters?”

“I can hear you, sir,” JARVIS says, patient as always. “And I assure you that Captain Rogers is well aware of what I am.”

“Fury said that your father knew him.”

Tony freezes. Steve can see the instant tension in his legs. “JARVIS, cut the music.” There’s a rolling noise and Tony appears from beneath the panel, pushing a pair of safety goggles into his hair. “My dad _knew_ him?”

“That’s what Fury said.”

Tony sits up. “My dear dead dad knew, what you think, is a functionally sentient giant metal robot and never mentioned it to me?”

Steve shrugs. 

“I mean that’s not entirely out of the ordinary. Dad got cagey about his work sometimes. I was mostly just the screw up, disappointing offspring.” He taps a wrench against his knee. “I’ll look into it, Spangles. Now get out of my lab.”

Maria is probably the most helpful. 

Steve corners her in the SHIELD cafeteria, buys her a piece of lemon meringue pie before he starts asking questions.

She picks at the pie and tells him what she knows. “He’s been around as long as I can remember. Nick uses him as an expert on Hydra. He has a lot of firsthand experience that’s been very useful.”

“Firsthand experience?”

“I know Hydra experimented on him. Fury’s never told me the details but I think that’s how he got the way he is. He’s an expert on Hydra activities in the years after World War II so he comes with us when we clear older Hydra bases.”

Steve nods. “Do you know who he is?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t see him outside of missions. He lives somewhere outside the city. That’s all I know. If Fury calls, he comes, though.”

“I think the Soldier would be good on this one,” Steve tells Fury, going for casual. He has a map of a Hydra base in Siberia spread out over the table in one of the glass walled conference rooms. The New York offices are smaller than the DC offices - but nothing beats the views of Brooklyn across the river. 

He can feel Fury eyeing him and he doesn’t look up from the map. 

“Why?”

“This base dates back to the 1940s,” Steve explains. “It looks cut and dry but who knows what kind of failsafes they worked into the defenses. There could be legacy stuff the team hasn’t seen in years.”

“You’ve done your research.” Fury leans in his chair, crossing his arms across his chest.

Steve meets his gaze head on. 

“Okay,” Fury says. “I’ll give him a call. But no promises. He’s been turning down a lot of my requests lately.”

Steve files that little bit of information away, adding it to the growing mental file he has about the Soldier.

No matter what Natasha says, Steve was not waiting for the Soldier to arrive. There was plenty for him to do on the helicarrier as it powered toward Siberia. He had briefings to give, plans to go over, weapons checks to complete. It wasn’t any of her business if he decided to complete those tasks from the hangar. 

Still, when the Soldier’s jet dropped in to land perfectly, Steve couldn’t help tucking away the gear he’d been checking to walk over. 

Up close, the Soldier is even bigger: thick metal limbs and a powerful torso. His chest is massive, tapering down slender hip joints with legs that look like they could spring over a 30 foot wall. The glow in his chest pulses and flickers like its a roaring fire. His hair falls over his face, hiding his eyes, as he secures the jet into the hangar. 

“Fury said you be here,” he calls out. He wants to the Soldier to turn. He wants to see those eyes again. 

The Soldier pivots smoothly, like he’d known Steve was there all along. His gaze shimmers in the sunlight, raking over Steve like he’s looking for something. “Captain,” he says with that deep rumble of his.

“You can call me Steve,” he says and jumps down. He offers his hand like he would when meeting any fellow soldier for the first time. 

The Soldier lifts his hand as well, delicately like he’s afraid he might hurt Steve. “You can call me Soldier,” he says. 

Steve wraps his hand around two of his fingers. The metal is warmer than he expected, butter smooth and polished under his touch. He can feel the restrained power there. “Soldier,” he says. “Thanks for your help in New York. I didn’t see you after to say it then.”

Soldier nods and his gaze flickers with that familiar blue again. 

There are things Steve notices right away: how no one else comes to greet Soldier, how Soldier stays in the shadows. They’re supposed to have their pre-mission briefing up in the Ready room and Steve realizes that there’s no way Soldier could get up there through the narrow halls.

“The solider doesn’t come to these things,” one of the STRIKE team tells him. “Fury will just tell him what he needs to know over the comms. Don’t worry about it.”

Steve worries about it. He asked for Soldier to be here, on this mission. He’s a member of the team - he shouldn’t be shuffled to the fringes just because it’s convenient. 

There’s some grumbling when Steve herds everyone down to the hangar bay to have the briefing near the helicopters, but it’s worth it to see the gleam in Soldier’s eyes. 

Even after doing a dozen of these missions with SHIELD, Steve never feels at home in the raucous after-mission celebration the STRIKE team always has. He doesn’t fit in with them, and they know it, treating him with an odd mix of deference and coddling.

He’s their commanding officer, a senior citizen, and ten years their junior all at the same time. They jostle against him and back away. So, he typically finds himself ways to keep busy in the immediate hours after a mission. 

This time, he’s going to do inventory of their ammunition. 

Halfway across the hangar, he spots Soldier sitting in the shadows near his plane, arms folded over his knees.

Steve slows. He should make sure Soldier is okay. The infirmary on the helicarrier may be well equipped, but it’s small and probably not suited for someone like Soldier. Steve winces. He should’ve thought of that sooner, before he asked Fury to bring Soldier out. What if something had gone wrong? Who in SHIELD is capable of treating Soldier if gets injured? That’s something he should’ve thought about. He pauses now, tries to look him over as best he can from a distance. 

Soldier is sitting quietly, unmoving for the most part. His bright gaze is fixed upward, watching the revelry of the STRIKE team upstairs. The metal face doesn’t change from one expression to the next, not really, but Steve thinks he recognizes the emotion anyway. 

Loneliness. 

Steve changes course. Maybe they could both use a friend.


	5. Chapter 5

The next time Steve goes on a mission, Fury doesn't bother with a reason. Bucky gets the info in his email on a Tuesday night and he's climbing into his jet Wednesday morning to meet Romanoff and Steve in Algeria. 

Their quinjet is perched on a rocky cliff overlooking a long valley full of nothing but brown green shrubs and sandy stones. A hot wind is whipping through the air as Bucky climbs out of the cockpit. 

Steve is in the navy suit, helmet on and shield on his back. “Glad you could make it,” he says and Bucky can read the truth of it in his eyes. He's glad to see the Soldier, even though he has no idea that Bucky lies beneath. 

“Wouldn't miss it,” Bucky rumbles. 

Romanoff isn’t as easy with him. They haven't ever had much reason to interact in the past. Her missions tend toward the covert while his… don't. Fury trusts her as much as he does anyone though - that's enough for him. He doesn’t know what she thinks of him. 

She's Russian, he knows. She was unmade and made like he was, though in less obvious ways. Her monster is within. He has caught her watching him, her eyes carefully shuttered, and he wonders what stories about him were told in the Red Room. 

Steve outlines their plan quickly, quick tactical notes in that straightforward way of his. They’ll go through the canyon, take out the perimeter guards and Natasha will set the charges to detonate the illegal weapons cache. Rendezvous back here in an hour. 

“That sound good to you?” Steve asks him, head tilted back so they’re eye to eye. 

“You’re in charge,” Bucky says, even as something inside of him preens at Steve asking him. 

The shutdown episodes are getting longer, more frequent. They come most often in the evenings. He can feel his limbs getting heavy, feel his eyes blurring, and then, nothing. Silent blackness until he opens his eyes and minutes or hours have gone by. 

He charts them carefully, compares their duration and frequency to the vitals on his deteriorating human body. Each blackout episode aligns to a life signs dip from the cryo pod. He is slowly winding down. 

Peggy calls every few days, when she remembers anyway. Her episodes are getting longer as well. She’s forgetting more and more, losing herself in old memories or just the ether of dreams.

“Steve came to see me,” she tells him, voice dreamy. “He’s exactly as he used to be and he misses you so, darling.”

Bucky listens to her wheezing breaths on the phone. It won’t be long. “Hold on, Peggy,” he tells her, even though he knows it’s selfish. “I don’t want to do this without you.”

She laughs a little. “You will have to figure it out, Barnes. That is the way of the world.”

The end is drawing near for both of them. He shouldn’t be going on missions. He’s a liability. If he blackouts in the middle of a fire fight…

But, the next time Steve calls, he goes.

The next mission is in South America. 

Bucky shows up on a grassy hill in Peru and Steve is there alone, waving a greeting as he gets out. “Should be an easy one,” he says and claps Bucky on the elbow like they’re friends. 

Bucky watches his back and thinks, _maybe I should have Peggy tell him. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if he knew. Maybe we could make this work, for the time we have left._

When he lands back at the estate, though, Fury is already there, waiting on the roof as the jet lands.

“She died in her sleep,” he tells Bucky. He looks more somber than Bucky ever remembers. “Her family says it was peaceful.”

Every inch of his circuitry trembles from the force of his emotions, sensors fritzing out and his joints rubbing together. He should be more prepared. He knew this was coming. Why does it still hurt like a fresh wound? He’s surprised his knees don’t knock together with the force of it. 

“Does Steve know?” Bucky asks when his neural pathways have settled. 

Fury nods. “Her daughter called him.”

Bucky nods again. His inner core is wavering and he puts out a hand. There’s nothing there and he goes to his knees on the stone roof, the crashing sending birds into the air with a rush of wings. _I can’t breathe_ , he thinks, but it’s not true because he hasn’t needed to breathe in almost 70 years. 

Peggy is gone. There is no one left alive who knows the truth about Bucky Barnes. 

Steve will never know.

His shoulders shake and he thinks his very insides are moaning, crying out with the agony of it all. 

Peggy was the best of them. Her life was wonderful and full of meaning and purpose, she deserves her rest. _Goodbye, dear friend._

He blinks and Nick is in front of him. The man has his hand outstretched and he hesitates only a second before resting it on Bucky’s shoulder. 

“We all loved her,” he says. 

Bucky doesn’t see Steve for awhile. Fury tells him that Steve is taking a temporary leave from active duty. He does attend Peggy’s funeral, helps carry her casket from the church to the graveyard. Fury sends Bucky the pictures. His face is tear streaked and he looks so lost. Bucky wants to hold him, touch his face and tell him he’s not alone. 

Instead, he sits in his giant house and pounds his fists into old stone walls. In the garden, he tears up old stumps from the earth, hurdles them down hills. He goes down to the basement and sits in front of the cryo chamber, sits in front of his own flesh body, and thinks, _wake up. Wake up. If you love him, wake up for him._

He closes his eyes and, when he has opened them, hours have gone by. It takes a long time for him to gather the strength to go upstairs.

In February, Steve heads out to clear a Hydra base in Scotland. Bucky meets him there, wishes he could smile at Steve or touch him kindly. Instead, he salutes and watches Steve carefully on the trek to the base. 

Peggy had told him what happened after he fell. Steve had been reckless, focused only on the mission. Steve hadn’t cared if he’d lived or died and he had died. 

Bucky wasn’t going to let that happen this time. 

When it’s over, and Steve is a little banged up but not dead, they sit together on a bluff over looking the ocean. 

“Sometimes I don’t recognize the world,’ Steve says, wind whipping across his face. “I went into the ice and thought I’d saved the world, destroyed Hydra. I wake up and the world is still a mess and Hydra is still fighting.” He shakes his head. “Or maybe it’s that I recognize the world too much and I’d hoped I wouldn’t.”

Bucky pokes his finger in the grass, watches the dirt work its way into the grooves of his hand. “The world can change around you,” he says. “You just have to keep knowing who you are, knowing what guides you. Don’t let the world change into something you’re not.”

Steve turns to look at him, so small and fragile next to his big frame. “You’re a good friend,” he tells him. “You’re one of the only things that makes sense to me now.”

There’s an earthquake down in California, near the border with Mexico. 

Steve is the one who calls Bucky from the air, only the second or third time he’s suited up since Peggy died. “We’re all heading down there,” he says, voice sounding tinny from the belly of the quinjet. “I’m sure we could put your talents to use, if you’re free.”

Bucky looks out over his gardens and says yes. He had an episode last night. He’d gone out to the garden in the morning and not awoken from the blackout until after sunset. Yet, he has to go.

The Avengers are already there when he arrives, picking through the rubble of the small desert town nearest to the epicenter as emergency workers hand out food and water and tend to the injured. 

Steve is covered in grit from head to toe, sweat smeared across his hairline. “There’s a grocery store a couple blocks over - could use your help with the lifting.”

Bucky lifts the giant cinder blocks and beams, triple even what Steve could lift, so Steve can slide into the half slumped building and help the people inside find their way out. Some of them gasp or cower at the sight of Bucky, but Steve soothes them.

“This is the Soldier,” he tells them. “He’s here to help us. He’s the reason we were able to save you.”

The building has almost been cleared when an aftershock hits with a growing rumble. The ground shakes and Bucky almost loses his footing as he braces the large beam he’s using to keep the pathway out of the grocery store clear. Even as he holds it steady, he can see the rest of the half caved in grocery store shifting. 

His warm core jolts, cold like ice. 

Steve is inside in the building. Steve is still looking for survivors. 

Glass shatters somewhere and someone cries out. Bucky braces the beam and stares uselessly into the dim interior of the swaying remnants of the store. _C’mon, Steve._ The building trembles again and then, the west corner, the corner where Steve had been, collapses with a roar and a cloud of dust. 

Bucky starts to move even while the earth continues to shake. He sets the beam down and leaps across the rubble, balances himself on one of the cinder walls still standing. “Steve!” he shouts at the settling rubble. Broken wood and blocks are all crumbled together, rebar twisted together and sticking out like broken bones, pieces of wall leaning together. 

Steve is somewhere beneath all of that.

He can hear Romanoff behind him, scrambling over smashed cars in the street. “Was he in there?” she asks and, then, into her earpiece. “Stark, get over here. Steve was in a building when it came down.”

Bucky doesn’t bother to answer. He leaps down the rest of the way and starts on the larger pieces of concrete, heaving it away from the pile. Steve would’ve been on his way out. He would’ve been on the west side, heading north. Bucky can start there, clear out the big pieces, listen for Steve’s voice.

“He’s not answering over his comms,” Natasha is telling him. She’s sliding around him, pulling at the smaller stones, pushing her head into the littler crevices and calling Steve’s name. “It could’ve gone out or…”

Bucky heaves a beam a way. “Steve!” he shouts, feels the concrete tremble beneath him at the force of his call. He pauses after, listens to the creaking and groaning in the destroyed building. _C’mon,_ he thinks. _C’mon._

Iron Man appears above them. “Cap’s in there?” he asks. “Jesus.” There’s a creaking noise from one of the huge beams and Stark darts over, bracing the giant piece agains his shoulder. “Hey, Iron Giant, a little help over here.” 

Bucky grabs the beam with both hands and heaves it to the side, clear of the rubble.

“Wow. Okay. Hi. You’re like the Hulk but metal. I like you. Okay, let’s see here. If Cap’s in there, he should show up on infrared…”

Bucky hears a beeping from the suit and then Stark is pointing.

“He’s down here - about six feet down. He’s alive.” 

_He’s alive._ Bucky leaps, uses the springs in his legs to carry him across the entire pile to area Stark had pointed out. 

“Don’t touch the big beam,” Stark shouts as he swoops behind him. “That’s supporting that whole section. Here, get that piece.” He’s zooming around like a gnat, shoring up beams. “I like you but we can’t bulldoze into this one. This requires someone with the keen eye of an engineer and… there. Okay. Lift that wall up, Mr. Gorbachev.”

Bucky bent at the waist and got his arms around the side of the large half crumbled section of cinderblocks and rebar and flaking concrete. It was at least four tons. He could feel his hinges straining and creaking. _C’mon._ This hunk of metal had to at least be good for this. 

With gasping roar, he flings the section upward, pushing it back into the rest of the rubble. It collapses into the street with a sound that echoes off the ruined buildings, a dust plume rising up in the afternoon sunlight. Bucky barely notices, gaze fixed downward.

Steve is on his stomach, one arm stretched out. There’s blood on the back of his head, striped down his shoulders. His shield had been on his back, protecting that area but his legs… Bucky could see the white of the bone, splintered and sticking through the legs of his tac pants. Blood is mixing in the with the dirt and bone and fabric, pooling around his knees. 

Natasha darts by him, leaping into the space he and Stark have cleared. She’s on her knees next to Steve, touching the back of his head like Bucky should be - but his hands are the size of hams and metal and not soft. He can’t touch Steve gently. He can’t hold his hand and whisper in his ear. 

“How…” The word comes out garbled over his throat and he works the mechanism, hears it grate over and over. “Is he okay?”

“We need a backboard,” Natasha calls to them.

“On it.” Stark’s suit powers up and he disappears around the corner of the street.

“He’s unconscious,” Natasha says to him, her hands moving over his shoulders and spine, down to his shattered legs. “Multiple compound fractures in his legs. Doesn’t feel like any ribs are broken.”

Stark appeared beside him again, sliding in behind Natasha with a long backboard. “Okay, roll him slow. Watch out for his spine. Hey, buddy, help us out here?”

Bucky leans into the space, taking the backboard as delicately as he can. Steve’s face is completely still, dirt smudged down his forehead and blood streaking down his neck. Bucky can see him breathing though, can count each slow exhale. He can do this. He can carry Steve.

He lifts up the entire backboard, one hand by Steve’s head and the other by his feet. Natasha clambers out, putting one hand on the stretcher for balance. “Our quinjet is parked a mile that way,” she says. “You should stay here. Help out. I’ll get him to the tower. We have medical facilities there on standby.”

No. He shouldn’t. He should be with Steve. Except - he won’t fit in quinjet, probably won’t fit in the tower either. He can tail the quinjet back to New York and then what? Return to his ivy covered mansion and brood in his solarium like a true cliche? 

He carries Steve to the quinjet, wincing every time his clumsy body jars Steve. 

“Take care of him,” he tells Natasha as he slides the stretcher inside. 

Her gaze turns on him and he feels pinned, even as he towers above her, like she’s seeing through all the metal to the glowing core of his being. “You care about him,” she says. “Why?”

Bucky’s throat clicks, rolls over, and his optic sensors burn. The words are there, on the edge of his audio box. _I knew him_. His throat seizes and the words die, the latent programming kicking in to shut down any clues at who he may be. “He is my friend,” he says instead.

Her gaze softens. “He’s mine too,” she tells him and then the back hatch of the quinjet slides shut and they are gone.

“He’s okay,” Fury tells him two days later. “Multiple compound fractures and a bump on his head but he’s already making a nuisance of himself. It’ll take 4-6 weeks even with the serum for his legs to be back to normal and he’s kicking up a fuss about staying in Stark Tower. He can’t be alone, though. Every villain on planet will want to take a potshot at him. We’re trying to find a safe house for him to recuperate.”

“He can stay here,” Bucky says, the words popping out before he can even think them through. 

Fury pauses, lets the silence grow.

Something whirs inside Bucky’s chest. “I have all this space, plenty of extra bedrooms. You know my security is impenetrable. A lot of the day to day functions are automated, thanks to Howard. He’d still be close to New York and…”

“I’ll suggest it,” Fury says and he almost sounds smug, cutting him off and then hanging up.

Bucky disconnects the call and closes his eyes. What has he done.


	6. Chapter 6

Steve arrives on a Thursday, driven up in a giant SUV by a wispy looking SHIELD agent who doesn’t even get out of the car. Bucky can see him in the front seat, a tall brunet he doesn’t recognize, eyes wide as Bucky lumbers his way down the front steps to the car where Steve is gingerly opening the back door. 

He has thick casts from toe to mid thigh, bright blue interspersed with white tufts of cotton. On top, he’s just wearing a plain white t-shirt and a gray sweatshirt that is half zipped up. He’s pale, blonde hair a little thick with sweat, but he manages a half smile when Bucky bends down to see into the car. 

“Hi,” he says. “Thanks for letting me stay.”

Bucky nods. “No trouble.” Should he offer his hand? Help Steve out? Should he carry him? God, there were so many times in the war he’d wanted to be able to carry Steve like he had in Brooklyn and now he can and he’s hesitating. 

Steve fixes his indecision by extending a hand, silently asking for support. The SHIELD agent still hasn’t moved so Bucky kneels, winces as his knees connect with the driveway with a loud screech, and offers his hand for balance. Steve has narrow canes that he swings out of the car and uses Bucky’s wide wrist to push himself into a standing position. 

“I’m not really supposed to walk,” Steve tells him, hobbling a couple inches forward. He’s eyeing the steps like they’re a villain he must punch to submission. “But I can do short distances.”

“I can carry you,” Bucky finally manages to offer. He winces when Steve wavers, cast slipping a little on the first step.

“No. It’s good for me to try. I don’t want to be in these things any longer than necessary.” Steve takes another step, wobbles, and Bucky springs forward, using one large hand to support his back. 

“I should carry you,” he decides and, before Steve can protest, he swoops him up, one arm behind Steve’s shoulders and the other midway down his casts. “I had the housekeeper set up a bedroom on the ground floor,” he tells him. Behind him, he can hear the SUV starting and a rev as the SHIELD agent peels away. “When you can _actually_ walk, I’ll show you the gardens.”

Steve is looking around the foyer, eyes wide. Howard had gutted this place when it became obvious that Bucky was stuck as a giant, metal, robot monster for the foreseeable future and redid it to accommodate someone of Bucky’s new height and breadth. All of the ceilings are at least 17 feet tall and the hallways at least 10 feet wide. The furniture was specially made, sized for Bucky with a few smaller pieces for his few and rare visitors. The floor and walls are a heavy wood, dense enough that Bucky could stomp his feet and nothing would crack. Thick rugs cover the floors, muffling Bucky’s pounding footsteps to something manageable. There are large windows wherever there can be, overlooking the lush gardens and the mountains beyond. 

“This isn’t what I pictured,” Steve says as Bucky carries him down the lower floor hallway. 

“What did you imagine?”

Steve pauses. “I don’t know. Something more modern. Metal and sleek. Like Tony’s labs.”

Bucky huffs. “I don’t like metal,” he says. “I have enough metal.” 

He has a housekeeper and a gardener that come up from the small town thirty miles away three times a week, a husband and a wife. He pays them well: enough that the 24 hours they work a week can be their only job. He’d initially contracted with the wife’s parents and, when they had become too old for the job, the daughter had taken it over. They had all signed NDAs and none of them seemed too bothered by Bucky anymore. He still did his best to stay out of their way when they were here, leaving detailed lists in the foyer if he needed anything outside of the norm. 

She had set up Steve’s bedroom perfectly, just as Bucky had specified. There is a wide king bed with a thick blue coverlet. A tray for meals is set to one side and one of the fancy Stark TVs is across from it. There is a small bookshelf that Bucky has stocked with history, philosophy and political books. He’d done his best to remember all the books Steve had crammed onto the single rickety shelf in their apartment in Brooklyn. Then, by the window, where he is sure the best light was, Bucky had set up a large easel with a set of paints and pencils. 

Maybe it is too much. 

Steve is silent as Bucky sets him gently on the wide bed. “You really didn’t have to,” he says quietly. “I didn’t mean for you to do all of this.” His face is pained and Bucky recognizes the expression well enough: embarrassment. 

“It’s no trouble,” he says. “This used to be P… Director Carter’s old room.” 

“You knew Peggy?” Steve starts a bit, wincing then as his legs bump a little. 

Bucky feels the constraints of the programming, traveling down his core pathways and seizing around his voice box. “I… she rescued me from Hydra.” He sits down on the floor, pulling his knees up to his chest, wrapping both his arms around them. “She and Howard.”

Steve pulls himself to sit upright against the pillows, gaze distant like he’s remembering something. “I knew them in the war,” he says, like Bucky doesn’t know. “She was an amazing lady.”

Bucky nods. “She was never afraid of me or, at least, she worked hard to never let it show. That meant a lot.”

“She was one of a kind.” Steve hesitates and Bucky sees his eyes dart to the easel. “Did she tell you about me?”

“Yes.” Bucky’s surprised the programming lets that tidbit by. “She never forgot you.” The air in the room feels stifling suddenly, pressing down against his gravitational sensors. He stands up, feeling every single creak of his clumsy limbs. An episode is coming. If he leaves now, Steve won’t see. “I should leave you to rest,” he says. “Have a good evening.”

He hurries from the room before Steve can reply.

Bucky retreats to the solarium to sit in the winter sunshine. He turns down his auditory sensors so that all he can hear is the gentle ticking of his own body. 

The episode comes on slowly. He feels the heaviness creeping over his feet, up his knees. The spreading numbness reaches his hands, his arms, his shoulders. 

Would it be like this at the very end? Would he know it was the last time? Would he feel his body go silent and still around him and close his eyes and just fade to black? 

He keeps his eyes fixed on the blue sky as his visual sensors flicker and dim. He thinks of Steve, just steps away. How selfish is he? Steve should be out, rediscovering the world and forging new bonds and Bucky has summoned him here as a meager comfort here at the end. 

When he awakes again, the stars are spread above him in a thick, shimmering blanket. He blinks and feels the sensation creep like ants back down his limbs. The episode had been over 12 hours. 

He stands up heavily, sways. Steve will be asleep by now. 

Bucky descends the stairs as quietly as he can, heading out the back door into the garden.

He paces under the moon until the sun comes up. 

Living with Steve again is both the same and totally different from how it had been almost 80 years before. 

The next afternoon, when Bucky comes in from the gardens, Steve is waiting in the foyer. He’s sitting in a big arm chair that had been custom made for Bucky, dwarfed by the huge dimensions. His casts are propped up on the footrest and he has a book in his lap. 

“There you are,” he says like this meeting had been on the schedule. 

Bucky nods and leans against the wall to clean the clumps of grass and dirt out of his clawed feet. “Here I am.”

Steve lifts the book. “I’ve been reading about the Cold War,” he says. “Were you there?”

“Stayed out of the way mostly. Even I wouldn’t do well against a nuke.”

Steve leans forward. “Tell me about it.”

That starts a tradition. After his morning work in the garden, Bucky will find Steve in the first floor sitting room and they’ll discuss whatever book Steve had been reading the night before. He’s even a more voracious reader than he was before the serum, devouring each book in just a few hours. He starts off with history from the last century and then moves back to the 1880s, the 1700s. He picks up the Iliad in his second week. 

“I wanted to read this before the war,” he tells Bucky, waving the thick tome a little. “But never found the time. I was either working or too sick to read.”

It’s the first time since he’s been here that he’s mentioned _before the war_ and Bucky leans forward despite himself. “What was it like?” he asks, even though he lived it. He wants desperately to hear the memories in Steve’s words.

Steve pauses, finger in between the pages of the book, holding his spot. “About Brooklyn?” he asks. 

“Yes.”

His gaze goes distant. “No one ever asks about that,” he says quietly. “They have a big exhibit on me in the Smithsonian. They cover every second of the war. Hell, there’s things in there that I didn’t even know at the time. But, before that,” he shrugs. “They have a picture of me at boot camp right before it happened, a list of all things that was wrong with me. But that’s it. It’s like I was born when they gave me the serum.”

Bucky feels his throat click. He thinks of himself in the basement who had loved that man that Steve had been and still is. “They’re wrong,” he says at last. “Science changed our lives but, if we’re lucky and brave, we are still the men we were without it.”

Steve stares at him, gaze soft in the afternoon sunlight. “Who were you?” he says. “If I can ask.”

Bucky looks down, feels the answering constraints of his internal processors. “I was a soldier,” he tells him, wishing it could be more. “I wanted to serve my country. I wanted to protect…” his voices dies and feels his mouth move soundlessly. _Fuck._ “All I wanted to do was go home and I never could.”

In the quiet room, Steve reaches out, lays his hand on Bucky’s. “I grew up in a tenement,” he tells him. “My mom was a nurse. She worked nights. I was a tough kid. Always sick and always hooked on one cause or the other. My best friend,” Steve stops here and Bucky can’t look at him, keeps his eyes down in his lap. “My best friend was Bucky,” Steve finishes. 

Hearing his name come out of Steve’s mouth for the first time in this century almost undoes Bucky. He leans forward and puts one hand over his eyes. _Yes,_ he wants to say. _Yes. That’s me. I’m here, Steve._ Let them have these months at least. They deserve this. He deserves this. But, the Hydra programming silences his mouth, clamping down like iron - and, all Bucky can do is listen.

When Steve gets the huge casts replaced with smaller walking ones, he starts coming to the gardens with Bucky. He stopped shaving midway through the first week and he has thick scruff across his chin, filling in across his cheeks. There’s no uniform here: Steve wears light sweatpants over the casts and a white t-shirt. He has a coat on, unzipped, even though the breeze is still quiet cold.

Bucky shortens his stride so Steve can keep up without rushing and takes him on his routes, through the thick hedges, pulling off the dead limbs and clearing snow from the little bits of green that are just emerging.

The animals are just beginning to reappear from their winter burrows and the warm barn on the edge of the property. Steve is tentative with them at first, standing back a little and watching the lambs and goats eat feed out of Bucky’s huge hands. 

When one of the goats comes up, butting at his knees, he kneels, only a little clumsy in the casts, and buries his fingers in the warm, light fur at her neck. He scratches her ears and she grunts appreciatively. 

“She’s Mable,” Bucky tells him and Steve smiles, radiant enough that spring might come early. 

It’s inevitable, really, that Steve witness one of his spells. Two days in a row, Steve joins him to walk to the garden before dawn. On the third day, when Bucky doesn’t come down the stairs, Steve must decide to go up them, winding up the large, wide staircase to the solarium.

Bucky opens his eyes to the morning sun and Steve is crouched next to him. Steve has his hand on his chest, right in the center over the warm spot that his life lives. 

“There you are,” Steve says. The sun is streaming over his hair and Bucky can see the bright green flecks in his eyes. “I got worried. You wouldn’t wake up.”

His processor has that muffled, gritty feeling that it always does after an episode. Bucky blinks, tries to get his optical sensors to stop making stars explode all around Steve’s face. “I’m okay,” he says and then flinches at the dry, metal sound of the words. 

Steve hums and pats his chest. “That doesn’t seem okay.”

Bucky can feel the movement coming back to his limbs. He can feel the floor and the sun on his face, warming the thick metal. He can feel Steve’s hand, rubbing the spot were his sternum should have been. “It’s nothing,” he says. He feels stronger already. He could get up now, push Steve off of him. Instead, he lays still. 

The skin between Steve’s eyes pinches into deep trenches. “Would you tell me?” he says. “If something was really wrong?”

Bucky swallows. “I’m old,” he says at last. “I know it’s hard to see but… I’ve lived a long time, Steve.”

Steve’s face gets cloudier, mouth pressed in a thin line. “Are you dying?”

He doesn’t want to lie to Steve. He can’t lie to Steve. “I don’t know,” he finally says because all of this has always just been a theory put together by Howard. Maybe he won’t die. Maybe his body will die and his consciousness will stay trapped in this metal machine forever. “I think so.”

Steve is quiet for a long time. 

“Were you and Howard friends?” Steve asks a week later when they’re sitting under the spreading oak. The snow has all melted away and flowers are starting to bud. Things have changed since Steve found out about the episodes. Steve treats him no differently - but he is more curious, asking questions like there may not be enough time to get them all in - like he wants to learn all of Soldier. 

Bucky taps his chin, feels the way his parts click together. “Yes,” he says at last. “In a way. I don’t think Howard really knew how to be a friend.”

“How about Tony? Did you know him?”

Bucky remembers the dark haired boy that he glimpsed only from afar. “I met him once. When he was very, very young.”

Steve hums, head tilted down as he studies the soft blades of grass. “He doesn’t remember you. He was surprised when I told him that you knew Howard.”

“Howard wanted to keep him safe.”

“From you?”

Bucky hesitates. “From… what I represent I think. Evil made me a monster.”

Steve looks up and his eyes snap brightly in the cool afternoon. “You are not a monster.”

Bucky shrugs. “To a six year old boy, I was.”

The silence grows for a moment and then Steve says, “Do you think Tony could help you? Would there be a way to…” he hesitates and waves his hand. “To fix you.”

“Howard tried for a long time. Decades. If there was a way…” Bucky turns his head to look at the green of new life out the window. “It’s my human body,” he says gently, because Steve should know the truth, as much as Bucky can say. He should be ready. “It’s almost 100 and it is eventually going to die and when it does, I believe I will too.”

It’s a simplified version of the truth. Bucky’s face in the cryo chamber still looks as young as he did when he first was forced inside. It’s his mind that is aging.

Steve rubs a hand over his mouth and his shoulders hunch forward. “That’s the way it works right,” he says and there’s the sour sound of bitterness in the words. “People get old. People die. Time passes by and the world moves on.”

 _Except for me,_ he doesn’t say - but Bucky hears it anyway. 

They’re in the study and the sunset is pink and gold through the large window. Bucky is staring down at some reports from Fury. He’s not reading them, not really. The SHIELD doctor had come up that morning and removed Steve’s casts. Steve had been a bit wobbly at first but by lunch, he’d been striding around like he’d never been hurt at all.

It means he’ll leave now.

Bucky’s not naive. This was never forever, never more than a few days in the long stretch of time. He’s tried to slow down and savor each second but, in these final hours, he wants to cling to Steve and beg him to stay. 

For Steve’s part, he hasn’t mentioned leaving - but Bucky has seen the way he’s studied his phone. There would be briefings and missions and battles, people demanding his time and attention. The world needs Captain America. 

Now, Bucky does his best to sit quietly in the peace of the study and pretend that this isn’t the last day. This is just one of many, he tells himself. There will be an expanse of days after this where they can sit side by side, existing in the present together. 

It’s almost dark when Steve clears his throat. “Would you mind if I drew you?” he says, a little shy. 

The center of his chest, that burning place where his consciousness lives, throbs. Steve had drawn Bucky in Brooklyn, in their apartment, sitting at their kitchen table while Bucky had shined his shoes. He remembers the scratch of pencil on paper and the hum of the city flowing outside their window.

“Yes,” he says and hopes it doesn’t sound strangled. “Yes. You can.”

Steve leaves the next morning, up with the dawn when Bucky is just coming down from the roof. “I can come visit,” Steve says, duffle bag slung over his shoulder while the black SUV idles in the driveway. “I want to talk to Tony. See if he thinks he could help.”

Bucky stands with his hands tucked behind his back and nods. It won’t do any good. He knows that. Hope died a long time ago. 

“Will you…” Steve hesitates. “Will you call me if things get worse? I’ll come up. Any time.”

Why does Steve care so much? Bucky feels his throat click. “I’ll let you know,” he says. “Be safe.”

When the SUV has disappeared down the driveway, Bucky goes up to the solarium and sits in the spot where Steve found him days ago. He sits with his arms over his knees and his face tilted up toward the gray clouds. He thinks of Bucky Barnes, tucked away and asleep in the basement. 

He thinks of all the things he wants and cannot have.

That evening, he has an episode. He watches the sun set and feels the tingle start in his limbs and closes his eyes. When he opens them, he hears the housekeeper downstairs and the sun is low in the sky. 

It’s been two days.


	7. Chapter 7

Bucky tells Fury he can’t go on anymore missions. He does it over the phone because he doesn’t want to see the pity in Fury’s gaze. 

“Are you sure?” Fury asks. 

There’s a shake in his fingers now. His metal joints are creaky and sticky and the smallest gestures feel jerky. Bucky squeezes his hand to a fist. “Yes,” he says. “I’m a liability out there now.”

He spends his time in the gardens, letting the animals crawl over him and letting the sunlight move across him. He doesn’t go down to the basement. He doesn’t want to see the cold body as it gives up fighting at long last. Bucky wants to sit here, in the warmth. Let him spend his final days in ways Hydra would’ve never dreamed when they first strapped him to the table. 

The absence of Steve is an aching hole in his center. Over the decades, he hadn’t even realized how the loss of Steve had begun to dull. There had been years where he had watched the rising sun and his first thought wasn’t of Steve. He’d been able to go entire hours without his thoughts turning in the direction of Steve. 

Since Steve had left, he was back to the beginning. He thought of Steve at sunrise and thought of Steve at dusk. Bucky saw his shadow in the corner of his eye and paused in the foyer to call toward his room, before he remembered he wasn’t there. 

Steve hadn’t entirely vanished. He sends brief emails, inquiring on his health or sharing a part of a book he read. They are friends, after all. Steve enjoys Soldier’s company and Bucky feels grateful just for that. 

His life is measured in days now. He hopes he will see the full spring bloom. He hopes he will see the new lambs birthed and see the first fruit from his trees. These are small hopes but he lets himself indulge in them. Perhaps Steve will come up when the flowers bloom. 

Then, Fury calls. 

Steve had been in Siberia. He’d gone by himself, left in the dead of night without a word to anyone. They hadn’t noticed he was missing until a day later when a distress signal had gone up from his phone. 

Stark had hacked his email logs. At 1 am in the morning, Steve had gotten an email from a string of numbers. There was a video file and a line of text. 

_If you want to know what happened to Bucky Barnes, come alone to 70°57'16.0"N 117°36'38.9”E._

The video is dark and grainy, black and white footage from sometime in the 1950s. Bucky recognizes it instantly when Maria Hill queues it up for him. There’s a dark lab with a square window about ten feet up. 

Bucky used to stare at that window, when the scientists were working. He’d stare at the sun until his eyes watered and burned. The camera swings around and Bucky sees himself on the table. The picture is blurry - but it’s clearly Bucky Barnes. Steve would’ve recognized him instantly. 

He turns away. “I’ve seen enough.” 

They’re in the quinjet, speeding over Europe. Bucky had come the moment Fury had called, meeting Hill and Romanoff and Stark at SHIELD HQ before taking one of the larger quinjets to Siberia. Thor is off world. Barton is visiting family. Banner is in Nepal. This is up to them.

Romanoff is sitting at the controls. “He took one of the quintets from the hangar,” she says, flipping on autopilot. “He would’ve been there in seven hours. His distress beacon went off 15 hours after he landed. All he took was his shield.”

That sounds like Steve. He was a master strategist, a consummate planner - until his blood got up. That email would’ve gotten his blood up. 

Stark is pacing, back and forth. He’s barely looked at Bucky since he arrived on the quinjet. They’re about an hour out from the coordinates. “We think it’s an underground base,” Stark says. “Built into the side of a mountain above a river. It’s a lot smaller than your average Hydra lair which is probably why we never spotted it before.” 

“It’s a network of caves,” Bucky says. “There’s a wide mouth down by the river. It’s only accessible from above by narrow tunnels.”

Stark whips his head around to stare at him. “You’ve been there?”

“A long time ago.”

The quinjet Steve took is waiting for them about three miles from the coordinates. There was a snowfall during the night and it’s dusted over with powder, blending in with the rest of the landscape. 

Romanoff kneels in the snow, looking off toward the mountain and the river. “He would’ve gone in by foot - gone through this valley and then come up on it from the east.”

“These aren’t professionals,” Stark says. “They didn’t even get the tracker out of his suit.”

“Or they want us to come for him,” Romanoff says. “We could be walking into a trap. Just like he did.”

“So we play this smart. I’m on arial reconnaissance. My Big Friendly Giant here is ground assault and you’ll slip in and kill them all and grab Cap. No problemo.”

In the end, it goes like this: Natasha comes down the narrow tunnels from above and Bucky heads through the valley to come in the wider entrances at the bottom. Stark hovers above to catch any Hydra agents making a run for it. 

The river is half ice, half dark freezing water and Bucky has to fight for his footing on the slick bank. His narrow feet skid against the muddy ice. This wouldn’t have been problem even a few months ago, but now he has to focus to make his limbs work together. He can almost smell the burning from the neural processors. 

_C’mon_ , he thinks. _Just a little more_. 

He’s lived in this monstrous metal for decades - let it work one last time. 

The mouth of the base is quiet.The only sign of the base is a large black door set into the side of the steeply sloped mountainside. Thick metal bolts are layered across it, one after the other. The whole thing has been welded shut, Bucky realizes as he steps closer. There probably had been no need for it after they had transferred Bucky stateside.

Decades ago, the Hydra team had dragged his metal body out this very door to the waiting plane. He remembers that. It had been back before they’d perfected the neural interface and he’d been only half able to control his limbs. His hearing had been fizzing in and out like a bad radio. But, they had opened the doors and he’d seen sunlight, pouring down into the valley and turning the river a sparkling blue. It had been the first time Bucky had seen sunlight in months. 

He’d tried to run. They’d caught him. He’d fallen face down in the river and had thought he would drown - but, a metal giant doesn’t need oxygen. 

Bucky approaches the door and runs his thick fingers over the welded metal beams, looking for a handhold. There.

He squeezes his fingers around the metal and heaves. The loud screech echoes against the cliff and the river. Bucky grunts and feels his elbow lock awkwardly. He pauses and shakes it out. His chest feels heavy, like an episode is coming. But it can’t. Not now.

With a grunt, he braces himself and yanks again. This time, the metal starts to peel away, shrieking as the bolts bend and tear. Once the first beam is gone, the rest are easier, pulling off like a dead scab into his hands. He tosses each one into the river. 

Somewhere above, he can hear gunshots and shouts. Romanoff.

With the door free, he wraps his hand around the thick handle and just pulls. The door comes free with a shudder, hinges popping off like corks as the pressure from the door is released. Beyond the entrance, the passage way extends: a dark and empty maw.

It’s quiet.

With the Widow coming in the top, they probably didn’t expect anyone to try this entrance. Bucky takes a step forward. His optical sensors blur and zoom as they try to compensate from the outdoor brightness to the dimness of the tunnel. His comms won’t work in here, blocked by the massive stone of the mountain.

Bucky remembers this hallway. It’ll be a dozen yards and then wide doors to the left will lead to the labs. Could Steve be there? What if they were doing to him what they did to Bucky? What if they had already succeeded?

The doors are closed when he gets there, no sound coming from them. Bucky hesitates. He should wait for Romanoff or go back to the outside and radio Stark. He shouldn’t charge in there… but he can’t help it. 

He tears the doors from their hinges, tossing them aside. The blue ray catches him full in the chest, sending him back two steps before he regains his balance. It burns cold, flooding from his chest to his limbs and his head. He can’t see past it. He can’t see. He can’t think. He…

Bucky gets his arm up and fires a repulser shot off blindly in the direction of whatever is shooting the ray. He hears a boom and then the beam sizzles to nothing. 

There’s a moment of blissful peace as the beam stops pouring into him. All of his limbs are tingling now, sluggish to his commands. He has to move. His eyes blur and then focus.

Ten feet inside the door way, a heap of metal smolders, a black helmeted Hydra thug draped face up over it, dead. 

Bucky stumbles a little when he moves forward, feet dragging clumsily against the floor. Beyond the smoking machine and the dead man, he sees the holding cell. He recognizes the thick bars and the steel cot. This is the last place he’d been Bucky Barnes.

There’s someone else in there now, laying on the same cot that he had slept on for months: someone blonde and tall and pale. 

“Steve,” he calls. The warm core of himself is trembling, almost sick with fear. What had they done to him? He has to crouch when he comes to the bars, this part of the ceiling sloping downward. 

“Steve? Can you hear me? It’s me.” 

There’s no response. 

Bucky pulls the metal bars away, letting them roll along the floor as he reaches inside. 

Steve is warm and limp when Bucky pulls him from the cell. His eyes are closed and he’s breathing shallowly. There’s dirt across his face but there’s no blood anywhere that Bucky can find. He’s unconscious. He’s okay. All of his limbs are pale flesh, intact and wholly him. 

“Steve,” Bucky murmurs. He uses the edge of his finger, strokes down the side of Steve’s face. The pressure sensors in the tip aren’t as good as they used to be but he can still feel the soft, warmth of his skin and the fine strands of his hair. “I’m here,” he says. “I got you. You’re gonna be okay. You’re gonna be safe. You’re gonna…”

Steve’s eyes flicker and open, pupils blown wide. He’s not focusing right, looking over Bucky’s shoulder to the ceiling. He coughs a little. Then, “Bucky?”

Bucky’s core flickers and he feels cold all up and down his circuitry. Had Hydra told him the truth? Did Steve really know? “Steve?” he says. “Steve. I’m here. I’m right here.”

“I’ve missed you so much,” Steve says. His eyes still aren’t on Bucky, drifting across the ceiling. “I dreamed of you.”

“I’ve missed you too.” Bucky brushes the hair back from his face. There’s an explosion far above and a shower of dust falls in the corner. “But I need to get you out of here.”

Steve huffs as Bucky lifts him into his arms. His hand clings to one of the thick metal pieces across his chest. “Am I small again?” he asks woozily, eye closing. 

“Shh.” Bucky checks the hallway before he slips out of the lab, leaving the smoking machine, the dead Hydra agent, and all the memories behind. Out here, he can hear rabid gunfire and an alarm blaring. He needs to get Steve back to the quinjet. 

He tries his comms again as he steps into the sunlight. Steve is unconscious in his arms again. “Stark. I have him. Heading back to the quinjet.”

“Roger, Terminator. I’ll pull Romanoff.” 

Steve rouses a bit when they arrive at the quinjet, blinking in the bright sun. He squints and his hand flutters to his head. “Soldier?” he asks, eyes focusing for the first time on Bucky. “Is that you?”

Grief swells in his throat. It had just been confusion. Steve didn’t know. “It’s me, Steve. You’re gonna be fine. You’re safe now.” 

Steve nods and his head sags against Bucky’s metal chest. “Thanks.”

Romanoff and Stark are still inbound and Bucky is grateful. He can’t hide the jerkiness in his motions - all of his focus goes into holding Steve carefully, laying him down on one of the bunks. 

His insides feel like they’re melting, hot and cold in equal turn. His vision is fading in and out and his sense of balance keeps failing. Once Steve is settled, he staggers and goes to his knees with a crash, denting the deck beneath him. 

_Just a little longer_.

With a groan, he manages to turn himself and prop his upper body against the quinjet wall. God, he feels heavy. He wants to close his eyes. There’s something dark in his neural pathways, sliding up toward the core of his being. This isn’t like the episodes. He’s not sure if it’s because of the blue ray or just the natural decline of his body. It feels final. 

_It’s okay._ Steve is safe. He’s with friends. This is all okay. It’s okay Steve didn’t know him. He got to hear Steve call him by his name - even if he didn’t know what he was saying. It’s all okay. 

Stark and Romanoff arrive. His vision is so blurry he can just make out Romanoff’s red hair. They bend over Steve. 

“Where was he?”

“Downstairs,” Bucky manages. His mouth feels full of marbles. 

“Is he okay?”

“Just unconscious, I think.”

“We have to get him home.” Stark turns and Bucky can just see the shine of his eyes as he studies him. “Are you okay? I didn’t know a robot could look peckish but you’re certainly trying?”

Bucky waves a hand. “Just get us to New York.”

“Do you need like a charge or an oil change or just a restart? Back in the day, I’d suggest giving you a good shake.”

“I’ll be fine.”

They make it back to New York in five hours. 

Steve is still unconscious and medics come aboard to carry him off. Stark goes right behind them but Romanoff pauses, crouches next to him. 

“You’re not okay,” she says. 

He feels a little stronger now - or at least, like he can stand without crashing over. He flexes his leg joints. “I can make it home. I just need to rest,” he says.

She watches him and he feels exposed suddenly, like she can see all the mismatched parts of him. “What should I tell him?” she asks like she knows. 

Bucky makes it to his feet. “Tell him I went home. Tell him I’m glad he’s safe.”

He manages to get to his jet without falling over and pulls himself into the cockpit. This is it and he just wants to go home to his garden, to the spreading trees and blue streams and gentle animals. 

Autopilot engages with a click and he lets his head sag back. 

_Just a little longer._


	8. Chapter 8

Steve wakes up in a hospital room in New York City and Bucky isn’t there. 

Natasha is sitting next to him, holding a paper cup full of coffee in one hand and her phone in the other. Her hair is back in a ponytail and there’s a fading bruise on her left arm. 

“Where is he?” he asks. There’s still fog in his head, making all of his thoughts slippery. He tries to focus. He’d been in Siberia. They had shown him a video, grainy and dark. A Hydra scientist had been narrating in Russian. The Great Metal Soldier of Hydra. Begin the consciousness transfer. Bucky had been screaming and Steve had screamed and then Bucky…

“Where’s who?” Natasha asks. She puts down the coffee. “We saved you, by the way. After you ran off without telling anyone where you were going. You’re welcome for that.”

“Where’s Bucky?” He’d heard Bucky’s voice. He knows it. It hadn’t just been on the video or in his head or in his dreams. It had been in his ear. Bucky had been holding him. Bucky had told him everything would be okay.

Her eyebrow twitches. “James Barnes is dead, Steve. You know that.”

Steve had thought that for so long. God, he’d been a fool. History is rewriting itself in his brain, coming into focus. He closes his eyes. The video - Bucky shaking hard on a metal table and something like a pile of scraps, waiting in the shadows. Bucky hadn’t died in the gorge. They had taken him to a Hydra lab and they had…. Bucky had been screaming until he had not been. The pile of scraps had begun to move, just before the video had ended. The men holding him had laughed.

“The Soldier of Hydra,” they’d told him. “He will come for you and we will have him back at long last. He is nothing more than a weapon - we burned your friend right out of him.”

Then, Soldier’s voice, from all those weeks ago: “I was a soldier. I wanted to serve my country. I wanted to protect… All I wanted to do was go home and I never could.” Those large silver eyes staring steadfastly at Steve like he had a secret.

_I’m right here, Steve._

Steve opens his eyes. _Bucky,_ he thinks, _I’m so sorry._ “He’s not. Where’s Soldier?”

Natasha folds her arms. She doesn’t get it. How could she? Steve barely understands it himself. He doesn’t have all the pieces - just sheer instinct and a knowing deep in his gut. 

“He went back home,” she tells him. “He didn’t look so hot - said he wanted to rest.”

_Are you dying? I think so._

“I need to get there.” Steve throws the blanket off and swings out of the bed. “I need clothes.”

Nat nods to the duffle bag sitting at the foot of the bed. “If you wait a minute,” she says, “I can call Stark and we can all…”

“There isn’t time. I’m sorry, Nat. I’ll explain everything later.”

He’s on the road in 15 minutes, cutting through the early morning traffic on his motorcycle as he heads out of Manhattan. It’s not quite dawn yet so the streets are still quiet and he’s on the bridge, heading up through Westchester, by the time his cellphone buzzes. 

“Romanoff told me you skipped check out," Fury says when he picks up.

“Did you know?” Steve asks instead of replying. His heart is thumping hard in his chest: he can feel the throb in every single one of his ribs. How had he been so blind? Had he not wanted to see? 

Fury lets out a long breath. “I began to put the pieces together.”

Steve swallows. “You should’ve told me. Did you know he was dying?”

All he hears is the wind for a long moment and then Fury says, “I hope you get to him.”

The phone goes dead in his ear. 

Sunrise comes with pinks and golds, spreading across a denim blue sky. The green trees rise up around him and the road lifts into the hills, winding toward the estate. 

The gate swings open for him silently when he arrives and he parks his motorcycle by the front steps. At the top, the wide door is flung open, swaying a little in the breeze. 

Bucky won’t be in the house.

Steve takes off into the gardens. “Bucky!” he calls. “Bucky!” Overhead, birds take flight, startled by his noise. 

Bucky isn’t by the barn or by the stream. He’s not walking in the hedges or sitting on the bench. 

Steve finds him under the oak tree, lying curled on his side like a child who’d fallen asleep while playing. Those bright silver eyes are closed and deep reddish gold glow from his chest that has always made Steve feel warm has faded. 

Is he too late?

“Bucky?” Steve goes to his knees next to him, reaches out to touch the smooth metal jaw, run his fingers down the ridge just above where his chest glows. “Bucky? I’m here.”

Bucky cracks open his eyes, silver glinting in the growing sunlight. “Steve?” he says and how had Steve not known it was him every time he said his name? No one says his name like that but Bucky. 

“It’s me. It’s me. I’m here. I got you.” He wraps his fingers around Bucky’s metal wrist, squeezes as tight as he dares. Is he in pain? “I know. I know now. I’m sorry it took me so long. But I’m here and you have to stay with me.”

Bucky’s mouth jerks a little but no sound comes out. Then, he says, “you know me?”

“I know you, Bucky,” Steve repeats. He leans forward and presses a kiss to the side of Bucky’s mouth, right to the metal edge. It’s nothing like kissing Bucky during the war, hot and quick in stolen moments in the dark. It doesn’t taste like Bucky or feel like Bucky - but it is Bucky in every way that matters. “I’m so sorry I didn’t know sooner.”

His eyes open a little wider, focusing on Steve. “Steve,” he says, voice mostly a creak. 

The tears come then, fast and hot and Steve has to dash them away. He can't cry now. This isn't about him. “Yeah. It’s me. Can we get you back to the house? Get you more comfortable? I’ll call Stark and maybe…”

“No.” Bucky’s hand jerks in his, more of an involuntary twitch than a real movement. “No. I want to stay here. I want to be here with you when…”

He trails off but Steve understands. This is the end. This is not the time to rage or fight. This is the time to comfort. His hand trembles when he touches the side of Bucky’s head, strokes down the side until he’s cradling his jaw. 

“Okay,” he says and it feels like his insides are being shredded. “Okay. Bucky. It’s okay.”

Steve shifts position, sits with his back against the oak and pulls Bucky’s head into his lap. He runs a thumb over the place where the eyebrows should have been. It's so unfair. All of this is a goddamn tragedy and Steve will spend the rest of his life raging and weeping over this. This isn't the kind of thing you come back from. Except, it is. Because Bucky had lived it and he had come back: made a life and a home. 

“You're so strong,” he says, over the deep raspy sound Bucky is making, not breathing but a terrible grinding. “Buck - the life you've built here. The things you've accomplished. You changed the world. You changed me. I can't,” his voice cracks. “I couldn't have done it. Not like you did.”

Bucky’s hands jerk and then his right manages to move, land gently on Steve’s leg. He can't seem to talk anymore, mouth just twitching terribly. His eyes are fixed, staring up at the spreading green branches. 

Steve swallows. “I love you, Bucky,” he says quietly. He can’t stop saying Bucky’s name. _I know you._ “I've loved you my whole life and I will keep loving you.” 

He leans down and presses a kiss to Bucky’s still mouth. It's an awkward position but he does it gently, feels Bucky settle under him. The twitching is fading, relaxing. 

“I love you, James Barnes,” he says again so Bucky knows that he’s there, that Steve knows him. “I’m right here.”

“I love you,” he says again and Bucky falls still, head dropping to the side. The bright silver eyes go dull and the glow in his chest flickers and dies. Steve feels his heart crack open but he doesn’t stop stroking Bucky’s forehead, doesn’t stop gently whispering in his ear. “I’m right here,” he says. “You won’t be alone again.”

Around them, the sun crests the tops of the trees and everything is gold and still. 

Bucky dies in a garden with Steve holding him. The darkness creeps over him until he can't see or hear, until all that is left is Steve’s gentle touch on his head and the grass under his body. It's peaceful. It doesn't hurt. It's all he could've hoped. 

He feels the last bit of darkness steal across his core and he lets himself fall into it. 

_Goodbye, Steve._ If there's a heaven or any sort of an afterlife, he hopes they'll be together there someday. He’s earned that much, he thinks: an eternity of peace with Steve close at hand. The darkness swallows him and all Bucky can do is patiently wait for what comes next.

Except, there is no light at the end of the tunnel or angels singing. Instead, a pain begins to build in his head, starting at the back and rushing forward like high tide. All of his limbs begin to jerk, agony like a thousand needles weaving in and out. 

He thinks he screams but all he can hear is a tremendous roar, like a freight train barreling suddenly out of the dark, rattling all the different parts of him. He’s shaking apart at the seams, crumbling into pieces.

He can't breathe. He can't open his eyes. He can't move. 

A shrill scream cuts through the roar and then there's a sudden rush of cool air and he's falling, toppling forward. 

Bucky lands on his knees, a rough jar that echoes through his bones. He coughs and gags and feels warm, briney water surge up his throat. An alarm won't stop screaming, a never ending blare against his ears even as the roar begins to fade. He reaches up and covers his ear. 

His ear. 

The world clicks into place with a sharp yank, something that had been out of sync for decades finally righting itself. 

He opens his eyes. 

He's in the cryo room below the house, staring at the control panel. It seems bigger than it did before, the ceiling almost cavernous. There's water around his knees, flowing in rivulets across the tile floor. His legs are bare, flesh and bone. His hand is flesh too, the other arm lost long ago. His feet are there. His torso, his ribs, his chest: all concave with years of cryo but they are all there. 

His heart is beating. He can feel the rhythm in his brain, the pulse of blood through arteries. He’s back in his body. 

“What the hell?” he says, feels his teeth and his tongue and his lips all working together with the easy smoothness the robot had never achieved. He lifts his hand and sees the little wrinkles of his palm, the way his veins are just a little blue under his pale skin. He pinches the skin on his leg and it hurts. He’s human.

And, then: “Steve!”

He gets up, falters when his muscles go like jelly as soon as he puts weight on them. He pulls himself up anyway. He's in thin pants and a tank top and he starts shivering almost immediately, deep wracking things that make his teeth click together. 

His hair is longer than he remembered. The scientists had shaved him before freezing his body - but it had grown slowly over the decades and now it's around his shoulders, falling sloppily over his eyes as he staggers up the stairs. 

As soon as he hits the sunlight, his eyes start to burn and he has to squint as he stumbles down the steps, into the wide green expanse of the garden. Everything is so much bigger, sized for a giant. His steps feel so short and limited and he's falling forward more than running. 

“Steve!” he calls. How much time had passed? It still feels like morning, the sun just a couple fingers over the tree line. Would Steve still be in the garden? His feet slip on dewy grass. “Steve!”

The spreading oak is huge, towering over the rest of the shrubbery and he heads toward it, tripping over the roots and uneven grass. He rounds the last bend and sees them. 

Steve is still sitting against the oak, hunched over the great metal giant in his lap. The first spring flowers are blooming in the sunlight, trailing around them like a canopy. He’s talking, a low mumble of words that Bucky can't make out, as he strokes the giant head. 

Bucky slows, seeing the body he spent the last decades in for the first time from the outside. It's even larger than he'd felt, limbs disproportionate from the torso. It's bulky and awkward and inhuman. Now, though, Bucky feels something like tenderness toward it. That metal had kept him safe all this time. 

He approaches quietly. “Steve,” he says, not wanting to startle. 

Steve freezes, but doesn't react otherwise. His eyes stay fixed on the still face of the robot, hand drifting to rub the temple. 

“Steve. It's me. I don't know what happened but I woke up and….”

Steve looks up and his eyes are huge, stained red around the edges and blurred with tears and so, so blue. His lips part and he says, “Bucky?” 

His muscles give out and Bucky falls forward, landing awkwardly on his knees beside Steve. “I'm here. I'm real. It's me.”

Steve’s hands flutter and then cup his face, holding him gently as he stares into Bucky’s eyes. “How?”

“I don't know. I don't know. I just… I'm here and…”

Steve doesn't let him finish. He leans forward and presses their mouths together and Bucky tastes salt and warmth and _Steve._

“I love you,” Steve says into him, sounding wrecked. “I love you so much. You can't leave me again. You can't do it.”

“Never,” Bucky promises as he leans into Steve, lets him hold him up. “Never. I can't. I won't.”

Steve pulls back, strokes his hair and brushes a thumb beneath his eyes. “Bucky,” he says, reverent like this is a holy moment. 

Soon, they will have to get up. They will have to make calls. They will have to figure out just what happened. There will be tests and meetings and explanations. 

For now, though, Bucky lets the sunlight seep into his bones. He lets Steve hold him and he finally feels like he has come home. 

_The End._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed!!!


End file.
